November 22, 2011 • 38 mins
Our cohabitation with robotic servants is pretty much guaranteed. So what are we doing today to make sure these are the sort of robot we can tolerate? In this episode, Julie and Robert discuss how our robotic caretakers are shaping up.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
we just finished talking about old people in robots a
little bit in our last Living with Robots podcast, because
as we discussed there, we're looking at a future full
(00:25):
of old people. I mean we will probably we're going
to be some of those old people properly and uh,
and somebody's gonna have to look after them, after them,
and they're gonna be fewer young people to take care
of all these old people. Young people will be busy
doing their stuff and you know, going into space and
all that, and they're gonna leave this this planet. Are
you saying they're the young people are going in the
(00:45):
generation ship and they're leaving off the old people behind. Yeah,
we'll have an oldie planet. I mean it'll be very peaceful,
lots of parks, lots of feeding scorel maybe maybe because
as we discussed in the last podcast, it could be
a bunch of rotting, uh, senior citizens with their exo
skeletons just skating right past you. You don't even you
(01:07):
don't know well, In this podcast, we're gonna explore this
topic a little a little closer, um, and a little
deeper and really get down into the nitty gritty of
our all Right, So we we want robots to help
take care of the elderly, or we want them to
take care of the elderly entirely. UM, let's start hashing
out some designs because, needless to say, you're common assembly
(01:31):
line robot is incapable of caring for Grandma. I mean
it there's a you go you you see like an
assembly line robot. It's gonna have barriers up around it
because it cannot work safely next to humans. And what
we're talking about here is is is a much I mean,
it's very far removed from that concept because it has
to be able to work around people without killing them.
(01:52):
Not only that, it has to be able to do
things like help a fragile individual with daily tasks such
as you know, get getting in and out of the bathtub,
using the restroom, helping them feed them, helping them to
know what kind of medication to take in any given time,
and anticipate their needs. That's huge, and do all this
while moving around in a human environment and potentially feeding
(02:13):
off of of human you know, these human cues and
human emotional cues. I mean, how hard is it to
understand what's going on in the mind of of of
the average person around you. Um, it's fairly difficult. But
but could we make a robot that could possibly at
least get some of those the subtle clues? Well if
they're trying, right, right, And that's that's what we're gonna
(02:35):
talk about today. Can we build a better bot? And
you know, what are some of the challenges? Um? And
and right now, I mean again, let's just talk about
the aging population again real quick. Particularly in Japan. It's
called the gray Yen. Um. It is called that because
it's providing a growing market in Japan for these services.
The Gray Yan almost of the population is over the
(02:57):
age of sixty five. And they can also this is
the other note to this, they can also afford a
bit more. The jet black Yen buys a lot of
toys though, and electronic gadgets, yes, yes. And the Sterling
it just means you get to hang out with Richard
Branson on one of his shuttle flights. It's called the
(03:19):
Gray Yen Shuttle flight Sterling. Alright, I like this. I
like this. The economy of the nation as divided up
into hair colors. Oh, I was thinking it was. I
was thinking it was more like the American Express card,
like the platinum and the red yen is is really adventurous?
Not going right? That dyed red hair. Yes, yeah, they're
all loose watch out with excess skeletons and the red yen. Yeah.
(03:43):
And then there's I guess the blonde yin because you
have the what there's a particular fad in Japan where
the women dress up like like dolls. Why is this
saluting me? Um? It's not. Is it part of kawaii?
It factors into kauai. But there's a there's this, yes,
(04:03):
and then there's a Lolita noir where they dressed up
like dark Lolita's. And there's a whole other by the way,
there's a whole they're like underground economy with the Lolita girls.
By the way, an older men, but we won't talk
about that today. Uh, getting back on track. Um, so yeah,
we're talking about you know this, this aging population of
(04:24):
old men looking for Lolita's. Um and just again to
put this in more context, by four out of ten,
Japanese will be classified as elderly. Okay, So it makes
sense that they're the ones that are really going after
this this problem of aging really um. And in fact
there's just so you know how they've been preparing. There's
actually a Tokyo based company called prop that has created
(04:48):
air bags for the elderly. Yes, you send me the
link to this, and it's it's pretty fascinating because it's
kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's like this
kind of robotic harness that you wear, and it had
as these air bags that will sort of shoot up
around the head and around the hips because these are
of course the most vulnerable areas of the old body. Um,
(05:09):
you don't want to hit your head, damns the brain,
you don't want to hit the hips. Very difficult to
deal with, you. So these are cushions that pop up.
They weigh two and a half pounds each enter tied
around the waist and then they're activated by electric sensors
that can feel a sudden change in movement as soon
as the alarm goes off. Fifteen liters of compressed air
(05:29):
inject into these inflatable pads, puff them up and then
ideally when you fall backwards, and you can only fall
backwards this right, by the way, never pitch forward. Right. Well,
I guess it's kind of like in um to bring
up pro wrestling again. Like a lot of those guys
like they trained to take bumps and they try they
generally you want to bump right on your back. And
(05:51):
I've I've heard some of these guys talk about like
they trained so this locker room talk. No, well, I
don't go to locker rooms, but room the bump, bump
on your back? What does that mean? To take a
bump is to fall Like any time in a wrestling mat,
for see a guy like take a punch or a
slam and he hits the canvas, He's taking a bump, okay,
And so they trained for this just to to take
(06:13):
the bump in an optimal fashion so that it doesn't
really do much damage. I mean, it will do a
lot of damage over time perhaps, but generally you want
to fall flat on your back and take this flat
bump on your back. And I've heard some of these
guys talk about to where they're they're trained to such
a point that if they were to slip on milk
in the grocery store, they would take up a back
bump because you don't want to fall on your side
(06:34):
or could be a useful skill. Right. So I'm thinking
you just need to train up the elderly. I think
the elderly professional wrestlers in Japan will will be the
really be the ones to try this out. Yeah, I'm
just thinking about whole Kogan, like, you know, uh, carrying
out these workshops for the elderly. Yeah. But you know,
here's the thing though, too, that that's so cool about
these airbags is that they can inflate in point one second,
(06:58):
the time it takes for an old person to topple. Yeah. Um,
so actually that's really helpful. I mean if you're going
to fall backward right um. And then there are partner
robots that toyota Is has been creating and getting into
the game of offering assistance for the elderly and the disabled. Yeah.
In fact, this is just like we're recording this what
this is the second week in November the first I
(07:19):
really can't keep track of this, okay, and and I
have no idea when it's actually publishing, like the third
or fourth week. Yeah, for you, it's like Halloween and
then nothing else right, I'm getting it. Yeah, after Halloween
is just this busy mess of holidays. Yeah, visits and
trips and da da dada. Yeah. But um but but anyway,
(07:39):
so that this first week of November actually a two
thousand eleven Toyota Motor Corporation in Toyota City in Japan.
I somehow was not aware that they Toyota had its
own city in Japan. It's pretty um they were. They
were really launching forward with this idea that Toyota is
really concerned about about working on these bots, making a
(08:01):
making a priority and partner bots are a big deal,
and and and not just in nursing and healthcare, but
also in personal transport, manufacturing, domestic duties like this all
goes into the idea of if we are going to
develop a future of work where robots are doing work
for us, we want to develop robots that can learn
tasks alongside humans and then eventually do them on their own.
(08:25):
Can you get that peanut butter for me? Right? So, so,
like the first logical step, well maybe not the first,
but one of the first logical steps definitely a stopover
on the way to this future is the reality of
helper bots. A bot that's going to help a human
with various tasks. So you end up with basically like
four different areas that that are essential as laid out
(08:47):
by Toyota. One independent walk assist all right, and this
is the idea of just supporting independent walking for people
whose ability has been impaired. UM. So these are sort
of like you fit your legs into this device, yes,
and it will actually help you. It's it's kind of
has some sort of nomadic device in it, but it
will help you actually get upstairs, walk around. Yeah, it's
(09:08):
like an exosuth skeleton, or at least a limited exo skeleton. Um.
No nanocarbon tubes in it. Strength, No like super Terminator
power armor with with power axes and all that. But
but but still you know it's it's the the the
idea is that say the legs are weak or inoperable,
but the exo skeleton around them can help do the
walking or do the walking for them. Um. While training
(09:32):
assists this is uh, this is a similar Balanced training assists.
This is like robots developed to support balance function training
with people with impaired balance. So it's think a combination
of a two wheeled self balancing type deal with game
elements aimed at making this kind of training enjoyable, right,
So I mean that would be actually really helpful if
(09:52):
you're if you're going through physical therapy as well, right,
we're trying to regain and also bear in mind you're
like gaming old people. But come on, we're talking about
a lot. We're talking in a large part about today's uh,
young or middle aged people, many of whom are gamers especially.
You know, Japan has a big gaming culture as well.
So imagine in the future, Yeah, there's gonna be Gamification
(10:13):
of physical therapy is just a no brainer. Right. So
right now there would be like a bingo program, right,
but in the future it would be like, uh, I
don't know what like World of Warcraft for for our generation, yeah,
or whatever, these retro games whatever is big in Japan.
I don't know, the World of Warcraft is big in Japan. Yeah,
but I'm just saying, like we're like Futson around in
(10:35):
our sunset years will be like, oh, let me just
program this World Warcraft and and think about those great
fuzzy memories of playing in my yester year yeah years. Uh.
And then the fourth area is patient Transfer assist and
this is really I found this would be the most exciting.
And this is the the idea that a lot of
caring for not only the elderly, but anyone who, like,
(10:58):
even people were just really sick before hospital for various things.
A lot of the caregiving comes down to moving the
patient around. Yeah, and it's physically demanding forge because yeah,
because you're having to move. Just if you're moving a person,
say they're not even particularly fragile, they don't have anything
particularly wrong with them, you're still talking about moving a
sizeable person from say their bad to a bathtub, from
(11:18):
their bed to a toilet, moving them around just enough
to even uh uh you know, to bathe them with
a sponge bath or or or administer or bed pan
type situation, or just to prevent bed sores and really
immobile people. Um. The idea is that you have a
robot with like a weight supporting arm that actually helps out.
And some some really cool pictures of this um also
(11:41):
surfaced from this Toyota event. And and then they're they're
really cool because and I'm not I mean, they're also
easy to kind of make fun of because it's like
it's a robot helping a dude set on a toilet
while a nurse helps. But but the thing is, like,
if you put yourself in the in the mindset of
that dude or that nurse, like this is awesome because
suddenly you have a situation where only one nurse has
(12:03):
to help this guy go to the bathroom, which is
great for the nurses, great for the guy, and eventually
could lead to the situation where this dude can have
assistance using the restroom. Um, you know, the very private
act that none of us want help with. I mean,
most of us don't want We don't want help with
it unless we're we're very young or very weird. We
(12:24):
don't judge fetish. Okay, all right, right, if you like
help going to the bathroom, that's great. But and if
you but if you, but the idea is if the
robot is helping you, then every I think more people
can get into the idea. And independence two, which is
a really important um you know when you're aging and
(12:45):
um And again importantly, also if you're staffing a hospital
to care for older people, the idea that one person
or even zero actual humans are having to help with
this task and they can therefore apply their skills elsewhere well,
you know that I that I love potty humor and um,
so of course when you showed me the video, I
was going to react to it. But it wasn't just
(13:06):
because the guy was being you know, I was sitting
on the toilet with assistance. It was that he was
wearing like like we're jogging pants, like you know, the
ones that are really tight, and they were black and shiny,
and then as you described, like this this sort of
prison yellow and white striped shirt and pants over that. Well, yeah,
well Toyota didn't want to actually bring a guy in
(13:28):
stage and have a robot with pants down. I appreciate that.
It was just really distracting because I was like, I
don't get it. Is he going to go running after this?
Is he in prison both? I don't know. Yeah, well
they could have gone more in the direction of the
fire toilet. Remember the gator, that's that's what's coming home. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:51):
but you're right. This was just in case anybody's never
seen this, you can go onto YouTube and see this
and uh, there is a woman that is using a toilet.
It that is uh, it's the fire toilet, right is Yeah,
it's basically a fire toilet. It's gas powered or gas
powered flames down there that incinerate the the waste product
(14:11):
that the one produces on the toilet. And again, this
is fine, this is great, it's actually using navy ships.
But again I take issue with the aesthetics of it
because the woman, uh, she starts this video and she's
got like, I don't know, maybe like a hundred keys
on a ring, So you're kind of like, what's the deal,
why do you have a hundred keys? And then she's
got you know, maybe some sort of like Eastern block accent. Fine,
(14:33):
but it just sort of adds to this ap like
there's no nudity in it, but she's like visibly she's
obviously dropping pants. She's not wearing some sort of black
garment underneath. And and then there's actual flaming poosh shown,
the flaming poush shown. They cut to a shot of
her with all you know, her pants DOWMP, but then
she's taken her boots and her socks off. It's all
very It just gets weirder and weirder the longer this
(14:55):
video goes on, a little bit like this podcast right now, well,
you can go weird either way with with um with
some sort of toilet technology demo, and that is to
either go realistic or go um with a black body
suit underneath your clothing. Yeah yeah, so okay, I got
my attention. Nonetheless, so let's let's talk nuts and bolts
about this too. Like, you know what, when we're talking
(15:17):
about building a better boty and we're really thinking about
it more as you know, we're gonna anthropomorphise it and
think about it as us. Right, this is this version
of ourselves. What are we thinking about? Well, one of
the big things is sensitivity to the environment that the
robot is working in and um on one level, that
involves just being able to move through it, being able
to navigate it, but also being able to just think
(15:39):
of your sense of touch. Um. Like. The best example
of this for me would be astronaut gloves. Like, one
of the big issues with astronaut gloves has been you
you put these guys up in space and they're gonna
be working on something really delicate, but they can't just
take their gloves off and work with their bare hands. Obviously,
they have to wear gloves, and you cannot wear normal gloves,
especially normal big thick gloves or space without losing a
(16:02):
certain amount of sensitivity. Now, with a robot you're building,
you're just building it all up from the bottom up.
So like where do you where do you put the
sensors on the on the feelers or on the body itself? Uh?
Could you give it a skin that enables it to
feel all over like a person? Right, so if it
bumped into you, it would know, It would know if
you bumped into it. And I also just think of manipulation,
(16:22):
Like even just imagine that the robot just had the
feeling of a human hand on its manipulators. It would
enable it to be far more delicate with something. Uh.
And in this case, it would be handling delicate things.
It would be handling us sponge bath for instance. Right,
you don't want something that's just a big metal um
claw on the end of a of an arm. You
(16:44):
want something that has a certain amount of sensitivity to it. Right,
you don't want to get bashed over the head with
a bar of soap. Yeah. Um. So yeah, there's this
thing called robot skin. And this says this is from
a Fast Companies article. Robot skin can feel touched, sense chemicals,
and soak up solar power. It says, what we're talking
about is a super intelligent skin designed by Stanford University researcher.
It's solar powered and when the skin is subjected to pressure,
(17:07):
the current flowing through the embedded transistors is modified as
tiny pyramid shapes molded into the polymer layer compress, resulting
in a super sensitive transducer that can apparently detect the
pressure from a house flies feet So cool criss cross
nanimator scale wires talk with a thin rubber sheet. I
like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just think that
(17:28):
it's it's an amazing technology in and of itself. And
of course they think that too, because it's not just
for androids all that that's what was intended for um,
they can also use it to coat cars or military
vehicles or even soldiers uniforms could act as biosensors and
solar power generators. And also think of the possibilities for prosthetics. Yeah,
(17:50):
and again for um, for astronaut gloves or or even
like forget the astronaut, for um, like a robotic exploring
probe where a person could say, put on a pair
of a pair of gloves on Earth and feel with
the very human tactile response. Uh An object on another planet, right,
(18:10):
and try to describe that in the texture of it
and so on and so forth. Um, of course I
can't help but think that it's going to be used
on Roxy the robot. This is the sex spot. Yeah,
but that's on the market right now. Yeah, but that's
in the words of of Arkin, the professor. Arkin, that's
(18:31):
a bad robot. That's just not like a very good robot.
I know, but it's something that could sor But I
don't see Roxy getting the kind of funding where she
can benefit from this kind of Seah. They're going to
have to do something about that tinny voice first. Yeah,
you know it says things like that gets me hot. Well,
well you bring up Roxy. As I recall, Roxy was
(18:53):
originally a nursing project and then they decided that they
wanted to make some fast cash on it. Yeah, that's
how all innovation seems to be generated these days. But
let's talk about let's talk about this thing called the
jazz robot and mirror neurons, because this is really important, um,
in terms of how we communicate with one another, right, Yeah,
(19:14):
and this comes down to it again. We're talking about
you want to robot that can live in a human environment,
which is not just dealing with a human space in
a safe way, but also dealing with the presence of
humans and being able to read them and uh and
so this this is something that just comes naturally to
humans because we have we we grow up around other humans,
most humans anyway. Um, we we have this theory of mind.
(19:35):
And anytime you're encountering somebody, you're you're picking up in
so many different things. You're picking up on on what
they're saying, their tone there there, what their eyes are doing,
what their hands are doing, what they're you know, their
basic expression, their body language, all these different factories because
you're trying to get into their head, right, which inadvertently
allows you to empathize with another person. Right, yeah, right,
(19:58):
And so like if you smile, than then you know,
somewhere in my muscles I start to smile back, and
I started to start to send these signals to my
brain that this is funny or we're having fun or
or something along those lines, right, And that's how that's
how we communicate with one another, right, We we read
so many different signals. So could you could you create
a robot create more to the point, could you create
(20:19):
an artificial intelligence, so it's capable of quickly analyzing all
that data and at least getting some somewhats of what
the mood is because uh, and imagine in a nursing environment. Uh,
this would in theory enable a robot to tell if
an individual was having some sort of an episode, if
they were they were distraught over something, if they were
in pain. Uh. I mean, especially with I'm thinking of
(20:43):
like Alzheimer's patients. Uh, you know, off hand, because a
lot of times these are people who aren't in a
condition anymore to really express what they're feelings, you know,
so you really need a human to be able to
check on them. But if the human is not immediately available,
then it would be nice to have a robot that
would be able to say, oh, well, this person is
experiencing some degree of pain. Um, we need to get
(21:03):
somebody here to check on them, right, right. And so
this is the the idea of this Jazz robot, which
is by the way funded by the European Union because
they've got some interest in this right into creating this
technology to help the population as a whole. And it
is um it's predicated on the notion of mirror neurons, right,
it's trying to use the same sort of circuitry model, okay,
(21:26):
and the way that the robot can predict behavior. So
it's actually trying to analyze the person's behavior and figure
out when there's been an error. Of course, when we
talk about UM, you know the more complex things like
checking in on a person and seeing if they're emotionally okay,
this is not something that the robot can do quite yet,
but these are the first steps. And so, for instance,
(21:47):
the robots were programmed to help a person assemble a
complicated toy UM. These robots could analyze the person's actions
as a person worked on the assemblage and then offer
suggestions by locating the proper tool to complete the assembly.
So at this point it's more like a helper a
partner robot, which I think is really interesting by the way,
the semantics of that a partner robot UM. But it's
(22:08):
not necessarily something that can be like, hey, how are
you feeling today? You know, would you like some soup?
It's cold outside? But maybe I mean these again, these
are the first steps to try and to get robots
to be able to deal with the complex machines that
we are right, of course, this would make us want
to dress up our robots, right well, yeah, and you
can already dress up your household robots to certain degree.
(22:30):
You can buy these, uh like furry covers to put
over your yea, And we're going to talk about that
and a bit right after this. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
(22:54):
explore the answers to life's questions. So we're dressing up
our robe, yes, putting furry costumes in our room bas
so that they look like circular mice or something I
don't know, with faces on top. Maybe we just want
them to you know, buddy up to the cat more.
I don't know, Yeah, a little friend for the cat.
(23:15):
Let's not forget the pets out there, right And and
there is the you know, the whole idea. Do you
want to make the to make it more the ro
about more relatable? A do we make it look more
human and be does the the operator, the owner or
the beneficiary of its service have some input into how
it dresses well, Okay, so the Swedish Institute of Computer
Science has actually been studying how much we have the
(23:36):
ability to anthropomorphize robots by dressing up some off the
shelf bots they are available right now, which I think
is funny. Right, So they're taking um, you know, something
like the pleio the pet dinosaur, and they've been giving
(23:56):
or that actually have been programming it so that you know,
if you if you change the outfit, it will actually
act differently accordingly to how you dress up your your
pet dinosaur. So also, you know, just keep in mind
that the that pleo is able to learn as you play,
and uh so you know, you can manipulate its behavior
a bit. So if you give Cleo a special watchdog necklace,
(24:17):
the robot remains active and on guard and putting you know,
air quotes on on guard. You can change the costume
from um that necklace to pajamas and the robot would
slowly switch into sleep mode. The costumes or accessors you
choose communicate electronically with robots program and just behavior follows suit. Okay,
(24:38):
so these are just a couple of things that you
can do. And they've also experimented with the roomba, which
I think is really interesting. They have these patches that
they put on the roomba and again it will behave
accordingly to to whatever this patch is displaying. So they've
got a patch that can make the ruma seem aggressive
or curious or shy. It'll actually like hide under the sofa.
(25:02):
And the whole idea is that robots can seem more
natural like these are the first steps again to trying
to you know, make us feel a little bit more
comfortable with robots in our atmosphere and too, and to
study how we behave and how we really project our
feelings onto these inanimate objects. And as we discussed in
the last podcasts, sometimes that is people just taking out
(25:22):
their aggressions on the robots. Yes, yeah, yeah, And again
I think that this is also in conjunction with lyric program,
which is the living with Robots program that we talked
about before. Robot House. Robot House. Yeah again, that a
great reality series just you know, waiting to be made.
Well if this leads us in inevitably to the Uncanny
Valley and discussion of the Uncanny Valley um, This term,
(25:44):
of course, is thrown around a lot, especially in terms
of Hollywood animated films, video games. We we've all seen
it before. You're they're trying to create a lifelike semblance
of a human being saying, you know, a cut scene
in a game or or what was it the Polar
Express movie with Tom Hanks? Oh yeah, which apparently that
was just a tragedy, a huge mistake, right because everybody
(26:09):
or most people know who Tom Hanks is very warm
and engaging person, right at least that's the perstpona that
comes off, and all of a sudden you have a
dead eyed Tom Hanks and it's very wearing his face
or something. Yeah, yes, yes, leather face in a Christmas tail. Yeah,
it's uh. This this all goes back to the paper
in the journal Energy where roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed that
(26:34):
robots that are too human light can veer into unsettling
territory and basically to get real like number centric about it, Um,
you can make a robot up to realistic theory, says
and it's great, like, oh, this robot is looks like
a person. That's amazing, that's awesome. But then once you
hit that the like the the the space between and
(26:58):
a human look is just creepy that's the that's the theory.
That's the theory. And the theory is that on a
psychological level of minds are perceiving the robot human effects
similar as as dead right or an unhealthy human or
you know, on some I guess primal level, like it's decaying,
it's not alive, and so we back away. Again. This
(27:19):
is the theory. There's so there's some disagreements on it.
I mean, especially when you get outside of its applications
in entertainment and really start looking at robotics again where
where the term was originally um, you know, discussed and
there there's some studies that have found that that really
it's more about the mismatch. It's about it has really
(27:39):
cool looking skin scan looks very human, but they the
eyes are obviously mechanical, are too big and so they're
not matching up to the rest of your expectation, and
that's what's unsettling. There's a there's an interesting book called
The wind Up Girl. I think I may mention it
before Sci Fi book tied for Hugo Award last year,
I think and uh. The title character, the wind Up Girl,
(28:02):
is an artificial human that is created by Japanese scientists,
and this is in the future and all. But they
end up programming um they call him heard the wind
wind up girl, or they call them wind up girls
because they have programmed in and um it kind of
wind up movement to their bodies that they can't quite control.
Oh so they don't have smooth motor coordinations, right, because
(28:24):
they didn't want them to look too human. They wanted
to keep the uncanny valley um in place to a
certain degree so that they would be marked. Uh uh okay.
So this is sort of like the whole problem in
Blade Runner with replicants, right, figure out which is a replicant? Yeah,
who's the human? Who's They said, instead of giving it
a complicated test about a turtle on offense post to
(28:46):
bring the whole empathy thing into play, let's just watch
him walk down the street and you'll be able to
tell right away. Um. So, So anyway, there's the one
idea that it's a mismatch. It's like, oh, it looks
like a person, but it's moving weird uncanny valley um.
But then there have been some other recent studies, like
there was one study by Carl McDorman, director of Android
Science Center at Indiana University, and uh, he found that
(29:08):
the uncanny effects seemed to be tied to gender. They
found that they yeah, they rolled out some various robots
and uh, and they found that women subjects were sympathetic
to UM the the to the requests of the robot um,
whether they were represented as a person or poorly poorly
rendered computer animation. Okay, this is this the scenario where
(29:30):
they're they're acting at this role as doctor and these
are patients. So one is a human patient on one
is UM a computer value. Well that's right, they're not
really robots, but it's you know, it's the idea of
here's here's a person, here's a facsimile of a person UM,
and then let's see how they respond to it. And
the men sided with the real patient, but not the
(29:51):
uncanny computer generated one, where the women were far more
likely to side with the sympathetic one because they had
empathy across the board, right, which interesting enough, I think
ties in nicely something we discussed in the one of
our early episodes about a year ago. Uh, the idea
that in the future the human race will be composed
entirely of women in their robotic partners that's right, ready
(30:14):
to talk about that, yes, Uh, and for for many,
many many reasons. Uh, this is not actually probably going
to come to fruition, but I think I think it might.
I think I think it will because look at it.
The men can't get along with anybody. They can't get
along with the men, they can't get along with the
women all that well, and they can't get along with
the robots. Well. But you know, I always take issue
(30:34):
with it because I think, well, yeah, women are great.
Don't get me wrong, I'm one of them. But that
does not make us like altruistic, like you know, the
best humans on the earth. I mean, I'm going to
say it, we're a little bit flawed. Well wait, way
to cover up for the female in so many different ways. Anyway,
I'm I'm digging myself in here a little bit. Agreading
(30:55):
a really interesting article in Popular Mechanics called the Truth
about Robotic Robotics on Kenny Valley, and they discussed several
of these different studies and scenarios, and they ended up
making the case that that when it comes to robots,
this the Uncanny Valley is largely hypothetical, and it largely
becomes less of an issue when humans are actually face
to face with the robots and dealing with the robots
(31:17):
on a on a on a one on one basis. Yeah,
that's what I read too, is that you know, it's
just the uncanny Valley is just a big sweeping generalization
and that um, you know, it's basically a short lived
psychological state that we're in when we're looking at the ropebot.
But once you get comfortable with it, that all of
that sort of falls away and you begin to project
your feelings onto it no matter what it's I mean,
(31:38):
it's like anytime we humans deal with with other humans
and encounter a little bit of the uncanny valley, which
if you if you're ever talking to somebody for the
first time and they maybe have like one of their
eyes is you know, pointing out a little to the side,
kind of like a Forest Whittaker type of thing. You know,
you know, it can be it can be a little
like off putting it first, but then you get used
(31:58):
to it, and because it's as the person you know
and uh and you uh, you sort of jive with
their particular appearance and their particular energy, or even if
it's just something as weird as like somebody's got a
strange scar or strange blemish on their face, or you know,
a satan goatee or something, I don't know. Yeah, so
you think that Unkenny Valley underestimates our ability to to
(32:20):
be adaptable and flexible and and actually our empathy to right. Yeah, yeah,
I think we tend to overcome a lot of these things.
It's kind of like with noise. You know, people were like, oh,
how can somebody live next to train tracks or how
or next to an airport, But people do live next
train stations and airports, etcetera. And they get used to
it because humans can adapt to to not everything, but
(32:42):
to almost anything. So this, this is something that I've
been wondering about. I know that the voice recognition is
a big problem with robots right now, at least a
technology that exists that something along the lines of of
these programs can success fully take what you're saying and
(33:02):
actually understand it and respond accordingly. So that's something that
in the future, obviously that it's gonna will be, you know, solved. Yeah, well,
I feel like maybe I only here what I'm listening to,
so well, yeah, exactly, I know, right, So it could
be as good as any caregiver out there. Um, but
I sort of wondered, like now that that Surrey is
(33:25):
on the new iPhone, like, is this you know apparently
like this voice of recognition technology is great and we'll
only get better. So I would like to hear from
people who have Surrey right now and see, you know,
would you say that she has an eight or better
chance at guessing what you're saying? And why is she
named after Tom Cruise's child right exactly? Why why his daughter?
(33:48):
I'm sure there's some sort of Steve Jobs joke in
there that that that's a great unsolved mystery. So yeah,
so there's some ideas about where caregiving robots are going
in the future, what the technology is looking like now,
how it's shaping up, and what it might look like.
So I would be very interested to hear from everyone
out there, I mean, what you think about this, uh,
through yourselves going forward, and especially anybody who has dealt
(34:12):
with caregiving situations, you know, be it a you know,
a parent or a grandparent, um, you know for yourself
or I mean yeah, so, um, and also your robot,
your caregiving robot naked or dressed up. That's what I
want to know well or yeah, or more to the point,
So a robot, say, robots helping you use the restroom
(34:32):
in your in your your golden years. Do you do
you want it to look like a person? Do you
want it to look like a bear? You wanted to
look like just a thing? Do you want it to
basically look like a you know, a side table that
you know that lifts up and down. I don't know well,
and you know, do you want the sort of end
user features that your iPhone has so that you can change,
(34:53):
you know, certain aspects of its appearance. You know it's
screen um, particularly when you go to the to the
red stroum. Yeah. And then and then this also ties
in you have a robot is helping you go to
the restroom. Yeah. Privacy issues coming to play too, because
if you have a robot that, in order to navigate
your space is constantly recording, constantly taking note of everything,
you don't want your bathroom helper robot to get a
(35:15):
virus or get hated. You know that's right, Ryan, Then
just you know, all of a sudden updates your Facebook
page and whatever that's going to be in the future
to say, yeah, my charge just went to the bathroom.
Ha ha ha, Yeah, you don't want it tweeting about like,
I don't know what I mean. Maybe people was coming
from the right place. The robots like yeah, another successful
batt movement, and then it tweets it. I don't know,
(35:37):
I don't know. I don't know if that these are
missives that we need to care about. Maybe in the
future that's what people will want. All right, Well, let's
have our helper bought hand us a listener mail. Thank you,
helper boy. So we heard this time from I listened
by the name of Mark Healing, and I'm using his
full name because Mark is an artist and uh he
(35:58):
has a fan page on Facebook. You can check it
out and as all all his art shared there. It's
pretty awesome, uh Mark Mark Wrightson and says, I just
finished listening to your most recent episode about art. This
would be this. U is your brand on art, and
I was very pleased to hear a different perspective on
some of the artists that I've been setting for the
past few years. Currently, I'm a student at Emily car
University of Art and Design in Vancouver, where I'm in
(36:18):
my final year. For a while now, I've been thinking
about the idea of an eight beauty. A concept like symmetry,
for example, expresses itself as a visual that has been
that has an inherent appeal in biological terms, a mate,
of course, is more attractive if their features appear more symmetrical. Uh.
This idea is pretty straightforward. Beyond just the sexual appeal
of symmetry, however, there is also the specific optical effect
(36:39):
which occurs when an image, whether very simply or complex,
is near. In regards to my practice, I attempt to
be very conscious of these notions notions of an eight beauty.
Um and he goes on. He shares a lot of
really cool ideas with us, and he says that I'd
be very pleased to be able to look at my
Facebook page. Hopefully some of what I am talking about
will become a little more apparent. If you go to
the first image in my galery, you will find find
(37:00):
my biggest project so far, which is taking about a
hundred and seventy four hours at this point. What he's
done with point zero zero three millimeter dots in order
to further pursue visual complexity, which has its own specific
capacity for drawing interviewer at least I hope. So anyways,
that is it. I really appreciate your podcast and I
have been a regular listener since way back when you
were still stuff in the Science leave. The show just
(37:22):
gets getting better and better. Thank you very much, Mark.
Thanks Mark. I was so pleased that we heard from
an artist on this because you know, you and I
are artists with words and the written page. I guess
I don't know that might be going a little too far,
but I did want to hear from a visual artist,
to hear their take on what beauty is and symmetry
(37:42):
and some of these different ideas that we were talking about. Yeah, totally,
And and do check out his Facebook page if you
want to see his art. I think it's like facebook
dot com slash m r k uh dot I l
l I check that out, and certainly any other artists
out there that are listening to us. So we'd love
to hear what you had to say about the art
(38:03):
on the Brain podcast. And you know, we'd love to
share our examples of your work on our Facebook page,
so let us know. And if you would like to
share any of that u with us, be it on
Facebook or Twitter. And if you have anything to say
about help our robots and the future against Facebook, Twitter.
Blow the mind on both of this, and you can
always drop us a line at blow of the Mind
(38:24):
at how stuff worth dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
we just finished talking about old people in robots a
little bit in our last Living with Robots podcast, because
as we discussed there, we're looking at a future full
(00:25):
of old people. I mean we will probably we're going
to be some of those old people properly and uh,
and somebody's gonna have to look after them, after them,
and they're gonna be fewer young people to take care
of all these old people. Young people will be busy
doing their stuff and you know, going into space and
all that, and they're gonna leave this this planet. Are
you saying they're the young people are going in the
(00:45):
generation ship and they're leaving off the old people behind. Yeah,
we'll have an oldie planet. I mean it'll be very peaceful,
lots of parks, lots of feeding scorel maybe maybe because
as we discussed in the last podcast, it could be
a bunch of rotting, uh, senior citizens with their exo
skeletons just skating right past you. You don't even you
(01:07):
don't know well, In this podcast, we're gonna explore this
topic a little a little closer, um, and a little
deeper and really get down into the nitty gritty of
our all Right, So we we want robots to help
take care of the elderly, or we want them to
take care of the elderly entirely. UM, let's start hashing
out some designs because, needless to say, you're common assembly
(01:31):
line robot is incapable of caring for Grandma. I mean
it there's a you go you you see like an
assembly line robot. It's gonna have barriers up around it
because it cannot work safely next to humans. And what
we're talking about here is is is a much I mean,
it's very far removed from that concept because it has
to be able to work around people without killing them.
(01:52):
Not only that, it has to be able to do
things like help a fragile individual with daily tasks such
as you know, get getting in and out of the bathtub,
using the restroom, helping them feed them, helping them to
know what kind of medication to take in any given time,
and anticipate their needs. That's huge, and do all this
while moving around in a human environment and potentially feeding
(02:13):
off of of human you know, these human cues and
human emotional cues. I mean, how hard is it to
understand what's going on in the mind of of of
the average person around you. Um, it's fairly difficult. But
but could we make a robot that could possibly at
least get some of those the subtle clues? Well if
they're trying, right, right, And that's that's what we're gonna
(02:35):
talk about today. Can we build a better bot? And
you know, what are some of the challenges? Um? And
and right now, I mean again, let's just talk about
the aging population again real quick. Particularly in Japan. It's
called the gray Yen. Um. It is called that because
it's providing a growing market in Japan for these services.
The Gray Yan almost of the population is over the
(02:57):
age of sixty five. And they can also this is
the other note to this, they can also afford a
bit more. The jet black Yen buys a lot of
toys though, and electronic gadgets, yes, yes. And the Sterling
it just means you get to hang out with Richard
Branson on one of his shuttle flights. It's called the
(03:19):
Gray Yen Shuttle flight Sterling. Alright, I like this. I
like this. The economy of the nation as divided up
into hair colors. Oh, I was thinking it was. I
was thinking it was more like the American Express card,
like the platinum and the red yen is is really adventurous?
Not going right? That dyed red hair. Yes, yeah, they're
all loose watch out with excess skeletons and the red yen. Yeah.
(03:43):
And then there's I guess the blonde yin because you
have the what there's a particular fad in Japan where
the women dress up like like dolls. Why is this
saluting me? Um? It's not. Is it part of kawaii?
It factors into kauai. But there's a there's this, yes,
(04:03):
and then there's a Lolita noir where they dressed up
like dark Lolita's. And there's a whole other by the way,
there's a whole they're like underground economy with the Lolita girls.
By the way, an older men, but we won't talk
about that today. Uh, getting back on track. Um, so yeah,
we're talking about you know this, this aging population of
(04:24):
old men looking for Lolita's. Um and just again to
put this in more context, by four out of ten,
Japanese will be classified as elderly. Okay, So it makes
sense that they're the ones that are really going after
this this problem of aging really um. And in fact
there's just so you know how they've been preparing. There's
actually a Tokyo based company called prop that has created
(04:48):
air bags for the elderly. Yes, you send me the
link to this, and it's it's pretty fascinating because it's
kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's like this
kind of robotic harness that you wear, and it had
as these air bags that will sort of shoot up
around the head and around the hips because these are
of course the most vulnerable areas of the old body. Um,
(05:09):
you don't want to hit your head, damns the brain,
you don't want to hit the hips. Very difficult to
deal with, you. So these are cushions that pop up.
They weigh two and a half pounds each enter tied
around the waist and then they're activated by electric sensors
that can feel a sudden change in movement as soon
as the alarm goes off. Fifteen liters of compressed air
(05:29):
inject into these inflatable pads, puff them up and then
ideally when you fall backwards, and you can only fall
backwards this right, by the way, never pitch forward. Right. Well,
I guess it's kind of like in um to bring
up pro wrestling again. Like a lot of those guys
like they trained to take bumps and they try they
generally you want to bump right on your back. And
(05:51):
I've I've heard some of these guys talk about like
they trained so this locker room talk. No, well, I
don't go to locker rooms, but room the bump, bump
on your back? What does that mean? To take a
bump is to fall Like any time in a wrestling mat,
for see a guy like take a punch or a
slam and he hits the canvas, He's taking a bump, okay,
And so they trained for this just to to take
(06:13):
the bump in an optimal fashion so that it doesn't
really do much damage. I mean, it will do a
lot of damage over time perhaps, but generally you want
to fall flat on your back and take this flat
bump on your back. And I've heard some of these
guys talk about to where they're they're trained to such
a point that if they were to slip on milk
in the grocery store, they would take up a back
bump because you don't want to fall on your side
(06:34):
or could be a useful skill. Right. So I'm thinking
you just need to train up the elderly. I think
the elderly professional wrestlers in Japan will will be the
really be the ones to try this out. Yeah, I'm
just thinking about whole Kogan, like, you know, uh, carrying
out these workshops for the elderly. Yeah. But you know,
here's the thing though, too, that that's so cool about
these airbags is that they can inflate in point one second,
(06:58):
the time it takes for an old person to topple. Yeah. Um,
so actually that's really helpful. I mean if you're going
to fall backward right um. And then there are partner
robots that toyota Is has been creating and getting into
the game of offering assistance for the elderly and the disabled. Yeah.
In fact, this is just like we're recording this what
this is the second week in November the first I
(07:19):
really can't keep track of this, okay, and and I
have no idea when it's actually publishing, like the third
or fourth week. Yeah, for you, it's like Halloween and
then nothing else right, I'm getting it. Yeah, after Halloween
is just this busy mess of holidays. Yeah, visits and
trips and da da dada. Yeah. But um but but anyway,
(07:39):
so that this first week of November actually a two
thousand eleven Toyota Motor Corporation in Toyota City in Japan.
I somehow was not aware that they Toyota had its
own city in Japan. It's pretty um they were. They
were really launching forward with this idea that Toyota is
really concerned about about working on these bots, making a
(08:01):
making a priority and partner bots are a big deal,
and and and not just in nursing and healthcare, but
also in personal transport, manufacturing, domestic duties like this all
goes into the idea of if we are going to
develop a future of work where robots are doing work
for us, we want to develop robots that can learn
tasks alongside humans and then eventually do them on their own.
(08:25):
Can you get that peanut butter for me? Right? So, so,
like the first logical step, well maybe not the first,
but one of the first logical steps definitely a stopover
on the way to this future is the reality of
helper bots. A bot that's going to help a human
with various tasks. So you end up with basically like
four different areas that that are essential as laid out
(08:47):
by Toyota. One independent walk assist all right, and this
is the idea of just supporting independent walking for people
whose ability has been impaired. UM. So these are sort
of like you fit your legs into this device, yes,
and it will actually help you. It's it's kind of
has some sort of nomadic device in it, but it
will help you actually get upstairs, walk around. Yeah, it's
(09:08):
like an exosuth skeleton, or at least a limited exo skeleton. Um.
No nanocarbon tubes in it. Strength, No like super Terminator
power armor with with power axes and all that. But
but but still you know it's it's the the the
idea is that say the legs are weak or inoperable,
but the exo skeleton around them can help do the
walking or do the walking for them. Um. While training
(09:32):
assists this is uh, this is a similar Balanced training assists.
This is like robots developed to support balance function training
with people with impaired balance. So it's think a combination
of a two wheeled self balancing type deal with game
elements aimed at making this kind of training enjoyable, right,
So I mean that would be actually really helpful if
(09:52):
you're if you're going through physical therapy as well, right,
we're trying to regain and also bear in mind you're
like gaming old people. But come on, we're talking about
a lot. We're talking in a large part about today's uh,
young or middle aged people, many of whom are gamers especially.
You know, Japan has a big gaming culture as well.
So imagine in the future, Yeah, there's gonna be Gamification
(10:13):
of physical therapy is just a no brainer. Right. So
right now there would be like a bingo program, right,
but in the future it would be like, uh, I
don't know what like World of Warcraft for for our generation, yeah,
or whatever, these retro games whatever is big in Japan.
I don't know, the World of Warcraft is big in Japan. Yeah,
but I'm just saying, like we're like Futson around in
(10:35):
our sunset years will be like, oh, let me just
program this World Warcraft and and think about those great
fuzzy memories of playing in my yester year yeah years. Uh.
And then the fourth area is patient Transfer assist and
this is really I found this would be the most exciting.
And this is the the idea that a lot of
caring for not only the elderly, but anyone who, like,
(10:58):
even people were just really sick before hospital for various things.
A lot of the caregiving comes down to moving the
patient around. Yeah, and it's physically demanding forge because yeah,
because you're having to move. Just if you're moving a person,
say they're not even particularly fragile, they don't have anything
particularly wrong with them, you're still talking about moving a
sizeable person from say their bad to a bathtub, from
(11:18):
their bed to a toilet, moving them around just enough
to even uh uh you know, to bathe them with
a sponge bath or or or administer or bed pan
type situation, or just to prevent bed sores and really
immobile people. Um. The idea is that you have a
robot with like a weight supporting arm that actually helps out.
And some some really cool pictures of this um also
(11:41):
surfaced from this Toyota event. And and then they're they're
really cool because and I'm not I mean, they're also
easy to kind of make fun of because it's like
it's a robot helping a dude set on a toilet
while a nurse helps. But but the thing is, like,
if you put yourself in the in the mindset of
that dude or that nurse, like this is awesome because
suddenly you have a situation where only one nurse has
(12:03):
to help this guy go to the bathroom, which is
great for the nurses, great for the guy, and eventually
could lead to the situation where this dude can have
assistance using the restroom. Um, you know, the very private
act that none of us want help with. I mean,
most of us don't want We don't want help with
it unless we're we're very young or very weird. We
(12:24):
don't judge fetish. Okay, all right, right, if you like
help going to the bathroom, that's great. But and if
you but if you, but the idea is if the
robot is helping you, then every I think more people
can get into the idea. And independence two, which is
a really important um you know when you're aging and
(12:45):
um And again importantly, also if you're staffing a hospital
to care for older people, the idea that one person
or even zero actual humans are having to help with
this task and they can therefore apply their skills elsewhere well,
you know that I that I love potty humor and um,
so of course when you showed me the video, I
was going to react to it. But it wasn't just
(13:06):
because the guy was being you know, I was sitting
on the toilet with assistance. It was that he was
wearing like like we're jogging pants, like you know, the
ones that are really tight, and they were black and shiny,
and then as you described, like this this sort of
prison yellow and white striped shirt and pants over that. Well, yeah,
well Toyota didn't want to actually bring a guy in
(13:28):
stage and have a robot with pants down. I appreciate that.
It was just really distracting because I was like, I
don't get it. Is he going to go running after this?
Is he in prison both? I don't know. Yeah, well
they could have gone more in the direction of the
fire toilet. Remember the gator, that's that's what's coming home. Yeah. Yeah,
(13:51):
but you're right. This was just in case anybody's never
seen this, you can go onto YouTube and see this
and uh, there is a woman that is using a toilet.
It that is uh, it's the fire toilet, right is Yeah,
it's basically a fire toilet. It's gas powered or gas
powered flames down there that incinerate the the waste product
(14:11):
that the one produces on the toilet. And again, this
is fine, this is great, it's actually using navy ships.
But again I take issue with the aesthetics of it
because the woman, uh, she starts this video and she's
got like, I don't know, maybe like a hundred keys
on a ring, So you're kind of like, what's the deal,
why do you have a hundred keys? And then she's
got you know, maybe some sort of like Eastern block accent. Fine,
(14:33):
but it just sort of adds to this ap like
there's no nudity in it, but she's like visibly she's
obviously dropping pants. She's not wearing some sort of black
garment underneath. And and then there's actual flaming poosh shown,
the flaming poush shown. They cut to a shot of
her with all you know, her pants DOWMP, but then
she's taken her boots and her socks off. It's all
very It just gets weirder and weirder the longer this
(14:55):
video goes on, a little bit like this podcast right now, well,
you can go weird either way with with um with
some sort of toilet technology demo, and that is to
either go realistic or go um with a black body
suit underneath your clothing. Yeah yeah, so okay, I got
my attention. Nonetheless, so let's let's talk nuts and bolts
about this too. Like, you know what, when we're talking
(15:17):
about building a better boty and we're really thinking about
it more as you know, we're gonna anthropomorphise it and
think about it as us. Right, this is this version
of ourselves. What are we thinking about? Well, one of
the big things is sensitivity to the environment that the
robot is working in and um on one level, that
involves just being able to move through it, being able
to navigate it, but also being able to just think
(15:39):
of your sense of touch. Um. Like. The best example
of this for me would be astronaut gloves. Like, one
of the big issues with astronaut gloves has been you
you put these guys up in space and they're gonna
be working on something really delicate, but they can't just
take their gloves off and work with their bare hands. Obviously,
they have to wear gloves, and you cannot wear normal gloves,
especially normal big thick gloves or space without losing a
(16:02):
certain amount of sensitivity. Now, with a robot you're building,
you're just building it all up from the bottom up.
So like where do you where do you put the
sensors on the on the feelers or on the body itself? Uh?
Could you give it a skin that enables it to
feel all over like a person? Right, so if it
bumped into you, it would know, It would know if
you bumped into it. And I also just think of manipulation,
(16:22):
Like even just imagine that the robot just had the
feeling of a human hand on its manipulators. It would
enable it to be far more delicate with something. Uh.
And in this case, it would be handling delicate things.
It would be handling us sponge bath for instance. Right,
you don't want something that's just a big metal um
claw on the end of a of an arm. You
(16:44):
want something that has a certain amount of sensitivity to it. Right,
you don't want to get bashed over the head with
a bar of soap. Yeah. Um. So yeah, there's this
thing called robot skin. And this says this is from
a Fast Companies article. Robot skin can feel touched, sense chemicals,
and soak up solar power. It says, what we're talking
about is a super intelligent skin designed by Stanford University researcher.
It's solar powered and when the skin is subjected to pressure,
(17:07):
the current flowing through the embedded transistors is modified as
tiny pyramid shapes molded into the polymer layer compress, resulting
in a super sensitive transducer that can apparently detect the
pressure from a house flies feet So cool criss cross
nanimator scale wires talk with a thin rubber sheet. I
like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just think that
(17:28):
it's it's an amazing technology in and of itself. And
of course they think that too, because it's not just
for androids all that that's what was intended for um,
they can also use it to coat cars or military
vehicles or even soldiers uniforms could act as biosensors and
solar power generators. And also think of the possibilities for prosthetics. Yeah,
(17:50):
and again for um, for astronaut gloves or or even
like forget the astronaut, for um, like a robotic exploring
probe where a person could say, put on a pair
of a pair of gloves on Earth and feel with
the very human tactile response. Uh An object on another planet, right,
(18:10):
and try to describe that in the texture of it
and so on and so forth. Um, of course I
can't help but think that it's going to be used
on Roxy the robot. This is the sex spot. Yeah,
but that's on the market right now. Yeah, but that's
in the words of of Arkin, the professor. Arkin, that's
(18:31):
a bad robot. That's just not like a very good robot.
I know, but it's something that could sor But I
don't see Roxy getting the kind of funding where she
can benefit from this kind of Seah. They're going to
have to do something about that tinny voice first. Yeah,
you know it says things like that gets me hot. Well,
well you bring up Roxy. As I recall, Roxy was
(18:53):
originally a nursing project and then they decided that they
wanted to make some fast cash on it. Yeah, that's
how all innovation seems to be generated these days. But
let's talk about let's talk about this thing called the
jazz robot and mirror neurons, because this is really important, um,
in terms of how we communicate with one another, right, Yeah,
(19:14):
and this comes down to it again. We're talking about
you want to robot that can live in a human environment,
which is not just dealing with a human space in
a safe way, but also dealing with the presence of
humans and being able to read them and uh and
so this this is something that just comes naturally to
humans because we have we we grow up around other humans,
most humans anyway. Um, we we have this theory of mind.
(19:35):
And anytime you're encountering somebody, you're you're picking up in
so many different things. You're picking up on on what
they're saying, their tone there there, what their eyes are doing,
what their hands are doing, what they're you know, their
basic expression, their body language, all these different factories because
you're trying to get into their head, right, which inadvertently
allows you to empathize with another person. Right, yeah, right,
(19:58):
And so like if you smile, than then you know,
somewhere in my muscles I start to smile back, and
I started to start to send these signals to my
brain that this is funny or we're having fun or
or something along those lines, right, And that's how that's
how we communicate with one another, right, We we read
so many different signals. So could you could you create
a robot create more to the point, could you create
(20:19):
an artificial intelligence, so it's capable of quickly analyzing all
that data and at least getting some somewhats of what
the mood is because uh, and imagine in a nursing environment. Uh,
this would in theory enable a robot to tell if
an individual was having some sort of an episode, if
they were they were distraught over something, if they were
in pain. Uh. I mean, especially with I'm thinking of
(20:43):
like Alzheimer's patients. Uh, you know, off hand, because a
lot of times these are people who aren't in a
condition anymore to really express what they're feelings, you know,
so you really need a human to be able to
check on them. But if the human is not immediately available,
then it would be nice to have a robot that
would be able to say, oh, well, this person is
experiencing some degree of pain. Um, we need to get
(21:03):
somebody here to check on them, right, right. And so
this is the the idea of this Jazz robot, which
is by the way funded by the European Union because
they've got some interest in this right into creating this
technology to help the population as a whole. And it
is um it's predicated on the notion of mirror neurons, right,
it's trying to use the same sort of circuitry model, okay,
(21:26):
and the way that the robot can predict behavior. So
it's actually trying to analyze the person's behavior and figure
out when there's been an error. Of course, when we
talk about UM, you know the more complex things like
checking in on a person and seeing if they're emotionally okay,
this is not something that the robot can do quite yet,
but these are the first steps. And so, for instance,
(21:47):
the robots were programmed to help a person assemble a
complicated toy UM. These robots could analyze the person's actions
as a person worked on the assemblage and then offer
suggestions by locating the proper tool to complete the assembly.
So at this point it's more like a helper a
partner robot, which I think is really interesting by the way,
the semantics of that a partner robot UM. But it's
(22:08):
not necessarily something that can be like, hey, how are
you feeling today? You know, would you like some soup?
It's cold outside? But maybe I mean these again, these
are the first steps to try and to get robots
to be able to deal with the complex machines that
we are right, of course, this would make us want
to dress up our robots, right well, yeah, and you
can already dress up your household robots to certain degree.
(22:30):
You can buy these, uh like furry covers to put
over your yea, And we're going to talk about that
and a bit right after this. This podcast is brought
to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the
Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark
which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and
(22:54):
explore the answers to life's questions. So we're dressing up
our robe, yes, putting furry costumes in our room bas
so that they look like circular mice or something I
don't know, with faces on top. Maybe we just want
them to you know, buddy up to the cat more.
I don't know, Yeah, a little friend for the cat.
(23:15):
Let's not forget the pets out there, right And and
there is the you know, the whole idea. Do you
want to make the to make it more the ro
about more relatable? A do we make it look more
human and be does the the operator, the owner or
the beneficiary of its service have some input into how
it dresses well, Okay, so the Swedish Institute of Computer
Science has actually been studying how much we have the
(23:36):
ability to anthropomorphize robots by dressing up some off the
shelf bots they are available right now, which I think
is funny. Right, So they're taking um, you know, something
like the pleio the pet dinosaur, and they've been giving
(23:56):
or that actually have been programming it so that you know,
if you if you change the outfit, it will actually
act differently accordingly to how you dress up your your
pet dinosaur. So also, you know, just keep in mind
that the that pleo is able to learn as you play,
and uh so you know, you can manipulate its behavior
a bit. So if you give Cleo a special watchdog necklace,
(24:17):
the robot remains active and on guard and putting you know,
air quotes on on guard. You can change the costume
from um that necklace to pajamas and the robot would
slowly switch into sleep mode. The costumes or accessors you
choose communicate electronically with robots program and just behavior follows suit. Okay,
(24:38):
so these are just a couple of things that you
can do. And they've also experimented with the roomba, which
I think is really interesting. They have these patches that
they put on the roomba and again it will behave
accordingly to to whatever this patch is displaying. So they've
got a patch that can make the ruma seem aggressive
or curious or shy. It'll actually like hide under the sofa.
(25:02):
And the whole idea is that robots can seem more
natural like these are the first steps again to trying
to you know, make us feel a little bit more
comfortable with robots in our atmosphere and too, and to
study how we behave and how we really project our
feelings onto these inanimate objects. And as we discussed in
the last podcasts, sometimes that is people just taking out
(25:22):
their aggressions on the robots. Yes, yeah, yeah, And again
I think that this is also in conjunction with lyric program,
which is the living with Robots program that we talked
about before. Robot House. Robot House. Yeah again, that a
great reality series just you know, waiting to be made.
Well if this leads us in inevitably to the Uncanny
Valley and discussion of the Uncanny Valley um, This term,
(25:44):
of course, is thrown around a lot, especially in terms
of Hollywood animated films, video games. We we've all seen
it before. You're they're trying to create a lifelike semblance
of a human being saying, you know, a cut scene
in a game or or what was it the Polar
Express movie with Tom Hanks? Oh yeah, which apparently that
was just a tragedy, a huge mistake, right because everybody
(26:09):
or most people know who Tom Hanks is very warm
and engaging person, right at least that's the perstpona that
comes off, and all of a sudden you have a
dead eyed Tom Hanks and it's very wearing his face
or something. Yeah, yes, yes, leather face in a Christmas tail. Yeah,
it's uh. This this all goes back to the paper
in the journal Energy where roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed that
(26:34):
robots that are too human light can veer into unsettling
territory and basically to get real like number centric about it, Um,
you can make a robot up to realistic theory, says
and it's great, like, oh, this robot is looks like
a person. That's amazing, that's awesome. But then once you
hit that the like the the the space between and
(26:58):
a human look is just creepy that's the that's the theory.
That's the theory. And the theory is that on a
psychological level of minds are perceiving the robot human effects
similar as as dead right or an unhealthy human or
you know, on some I guess primal level, like it's decaying,
it's not alive, and so we back away. Again. This
(27:19):
is the theory. There's so there's some disagreements on it.
I mean, especially when you get outside of its applications
in entertainment and really start looking at robotics again where
where the term was originally um, you know, discussed and
there there's some studies that have found that that really
it's more about the mismatch. It's about it has really
(27:39):
cool looking skin scan looks very human, but they the
eyes are obviously mechanical, are too big and so they're
not matching up to the rest of your expectation, and
that's what's unsettling. There's a there's an interesting book called
The wind Up Girl. I think I may mention it
before Sci Fi book tied for Hugo Award last year,
I think and uh. The title character, the wind Up Girl,
(28:02):
is an artificial human that is created by Japanese scientists,
and this is in the future and all. But they
end up programming um they call him heard the wind
wind up girl, or they call them wind up girls
because they have programmed in and um it kind of
wind up movement to their bodies that they can't quite control.
Oh so they don't have smooth motor coordinations, right, because
(28:24):
they didn't want them to look too human. They wanted
to keep the uncanny valley um in place to a
certain degree so that they would be marked. Uh uh okay.
So this is sort of like the whole problem in
Blade Runner with replicants, right, figure out which is a replicant? Yeah,
who's the human? Who's They said, instead of giving it
a complicated test about a turtle on offense post to
(28:46):
bring the whole empathy thing into play, let's just watch
him walk down the street and you'll be able to
tell right away. Um. So, So anyway, there's the one
idea that it's a mismatch. It's like, oh, it looks
like a person, but it's moving weird uncanny valley um.
But then there have been some other recent studies, like
there was one study by Carl McDorman, director of Android
Science Center at Indiana University, and uh, he found that
(29:08):
the uncanny effects seemed to be tied to gender. They
found that they yeah, they rolled out some various robots
and uh, and they found that women subjects were sympathetic
to UM the the to the requests of the robot um,
whether they were represented as a person or poorly poorly
rendered computer animation. Okay, this is this the scenario where
(29:30):
they're they're acting at this role as doctor and these
are patients. So one is a human patient on one
is UM a computer value. Well that's right, they're not
really robots, but it's you know, it's the idea of
here's here's a person, here's a facsimile of a person UM,
and then let's see how they respond to it. And
the men sided with the real patient, but not the
(29:51):
uncanny computer generated one, where the women were far more
likely to side with the sympathetic one because they had
empathy across the board, right, which interesting enough, I think
ties in nicely something we discussed in the one of
our early episodes about a year ago. Uh, the idea
that in the future the human race will be composed
entirely of women in their robotic partners that's right, ready
(30:14):
to talk about that, yes, Uh, and for for many,
many many reasons. Uh, this is not actually probably going
to come to fruition, but I think I think it might.
I think I think it will because look at it.
The men can't get along with anybody. They can't get
along with the men, they can't get along with the
women all that well, and they can't get along with
the robots. Well. But you know, I always take issue
(30:34):
with it because I think, well, yeah, women are great.
Don't get me wrong, I'm one of them. But that
does not make us like altruistic, like you know, the
best humans on the earth. I mean, I'm going to
say it, we're a little bit flawed. Well wait, way
to cover up for the female in so many different ways. Anyway,
I'm I'm digging myself in here a little bit. Agreading
(30:55):
a really interesting article in Popular Mechanics called the Truth
about Robotic Robotics on Kenny Valley, and they discussed several
of these different studies and scenarios, and they ended up
making the case that that when it comes to robots,
this the Uncanny Valley is largely hypothetical, and it largely
becomes less of an issue when humans are actually face
to face with the robots and dealing with the robots
(31:17):
on a on a on a one on one basis. Yeah,
that's what I read too, is that you know, it's
just the uncanny Valley is just a big sweeping generalization
and that um, you know, it's basically a short lived
psychological state that we're in when we're looking at the ropebot.
But once you get comfortable with it, that all of
that sort of falls away and you begin to project
your feelings onto it no matter what it's I mean,
(31:38):
it's like anytime we humans deal with with other humans
and encounter a little bit of the uncanny valley, which
if you if you're ever talking to somebody for the
first time and they maybe have like one of their
eyes is you know, pointing out a little to the side,
kind of like a Forest Whittaker type of thing. You know,
you know, it can be it can be a little
like off putting it first, but then you get used
(31:58):
to it, and because it's as the person you know
and uh and you uh, you sort of jive with
their particular appearance and their particular energy, or even if
it's just something as weird as like somebody's got a
strange scar or strange blemish on their face, or you know,
a satan goatee or something, I don't know. Yeah, so
you think that Unkenny Valley underestimates our ability to to
(32:20):
be adaptable and flexible and and actually our empathy to right. Yeah, yeah,
I think we tend to overcome a lot of these things.
It's kind of like with noise. You know, people were like, oh,
how can somebody live next to train tracks or how
or next to an airport, But people do live next
train stations and airports, etcetera. And they get used to
it because humans can adapt to to not everything, but
(32:42):
to almost anything. So this, this is something that I've
been wondering about. I know that the voice recognition is
a big problem with robots right now, at least a
technology that exists that something along the lines of of
these programs can success fully take what you're saying and
(33:02):
actually understand it and respond accordingly. So that's something that
in the future, obviously that it's gonna will be, you know, solved. Yeah, well,
I feel like maybe I only here what I'm listening to,
so well, yeah, exactly, I know, right, So it could
be as good as any caregiver out there. Um, but
I sort of wondered, like now that that Surrey is
(33:25):
on the new iPhone, like, is this you know apparently
like this voice of recognition technology is great and we'll
only get better. So I would like to hear from
people who have Surrey right now and see, you know,
would you say that she has an eight or better
chance at guessing what you're saying? And why is she
named after Tom Cruise's child right exactly? Why why his daughter?
(33:48):
I'm sure there's some sort of Steve Jobs joke in
there that that that's a great unsolved mystery. So yeah,
so there's some ideas about where caregiving robots are going
in the future, what the technology is looking like now,
how it's shaping up, and what it might look like.
So I would be very interested to hear from everyone
out there, I mean, what you think about this, uh,
through yourselves going forward, and especially anybody who has dealt
(34:12):
with caregiving situations, you know, be it a you know,
a parent or a grandparent, um, you know for yourself
or I mean yeah, so, um, and also your robot,
your caregiving robot naked or dressed up. That's what I
want to know well or yeah, or more to the point,
So a robot, say, robots helping you use the restroom
(34:32):
in your in your your golden years. Do you do
you want it to look like a person? Do you
want it to look like a bear? You wanted to
look like just a thing? Do you want it to
basically look like a you know, a side table that
you know that lifts up and down. I don't know well,
and you know, do you want the sort of end
user features that your iPhone has so that you can change,
(34:53):
you know, certain aspects of its appearance. You know it's
screen um, particularly when you go to the to the
red stroum. Yeah. And then and then this also ties
in you have a robot is helping you go to
the restroom. Yeah. Privacy issues coming to play too, because
if you have a robot that, in order to navigate
your space is constantly recording, constantly taking note of everything,
you don't want your bathroom helper robot to get a
(35:15):
virus or get hated. You know that's right, Ryan, Then
just you know, all of a sudden updates your Facebook
page and whatever that's going to be in the future
to say, yeah, my charge just went to the bathroom.
Ha ha ha, Yeah, you don't want it tweeting about like,
I don't know what I mean. Maybe people was coming
from the right place. The robots like yeah, another successful
batt movement, and then it tweets it. I don't know,
(35:37):
I don't know. I don't know if that these are
missives that we need to care about. Maybe in the
future that's what people will want. All right, Well, let's
have our helper bought hand us a listener mail. Thank you,
helper boy. So we heard this time from I listened
by the name of Mark Healing, and I'm using his
full name because Mark is an artist and uh he
(35:58):
has a fan page on Facebook. You can check it
out and as all all his art shared there. It's
pretty awesome, uh Mark Mark Wrightson and says, I just
finished listening to your most recent episode about art. This
would be this. U is your brand on art, and
I was very pleased to hear a different perspective on
some of the artists that I've been setting for the
past few years. Currently, I'm a student at Emily car
University of Art and Design in Vancouver, where I'm in
(36:18):
my final year. For a while now, I've been thinking
about the idea of an eight beauty. A concept like symmetry,
for example, expresses itself as a visual that has been
that has an inherent appeal in biological terms, a mate,
of course, is more attractive if their features appear more symmetrical. Uh.
This idea is pretty straightforward. Beyond just the sexual appeal
of symmetry, however, there is also the specific optical effect
(36:39):
which occurs when an image, whether very simply or complex,
is near. In regards to my practice, I attempt to
be very conscious of these notions notions of an eight beauty.
Um and he goes on. He shares a lot of
really cool ideas with us, and he says that I'd
be very pleased to be able to look at my
Facebook page. Hopefully some of what I am talking about
will become a little more apparent. If you go to
the first image in my galery, you will find find
(37:00):
my biggest project so far, which is taking about a
hundred and seventy four hours at this point. What he's
done with point zero zero three millimeter dots in order
to further pursue visual complexity, which has its own specific
capacity for drawing interviewer at least I hope. So anyways,
that is it. I really appreciate your podcast and I
have been a regular listener since way back when you
were still stuff in the Science leave. The show just
(37:22):
gets getting better and better. Thank you very much, Mark.
Thanks Mark. I was so pleased that we heard from
an artist on this because you know, you and I
are artists with words and the written page. I guess
I don't know that might be going a little too far,
but I did want to hear from a visual artist,
to hear their take on what beauty is and symmetry
(37:42):
and some of these different ideas that we were talking about. Yeah, totally,
And and do check out his Facebook page if you
want to see his art. I think it's like facebook
dot com slash m r k uh dot I l
l I check that out, and certainly any other artists
out there that are listening to us. So we'd love
to hear what you had to say about the art
(38:03):
on the Brain podcast. And you know, we'd love to
share our examples of your work on our Facebook page,
so let us know. And if you would like to
share any of that u with us, be it on
Facebook or Twitter. And if you have anything to say
about help our robots and the future against Facebook, Twitter.
Blow the mind on both of this, and you can
always drop us a line at blow of the Mind
(38:24):
at how stuff worth dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
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