Autom

Thanks to a tip (courtesy Steve Charlesworth), I spent some time branching off from the Robots Podcast site to discover more about the current projects relevant to social robotics. I was most struck with one project featured in mid-December.

Autom, the weight-loss coach robot

Autom is a weight-loss coach that comes in the form of a small robot. This first product released by Intuitive Automata tracks dieting activity and cultivates a relationship with the person trying to become healthier.

The robot is an outcome of doctoral research done by Cory Kidd, founder and current CEO of Intuitive Automata. Kidd cut his academic teeth with Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robotics Group at MIT. His work with sociable robots—robots that understand something about how people interact with each other—focused on addressing real-world needs for long-term health care.

In this case, the problem is that the average diet is about 3-4 weeks long. We humans are good at making changes, but bad at sticking with them. According to Kidd, 95 percent of all diets fail, with any weight loss regained within a year. A key reason for success is that the dieter keeps track of what she is doing and is aware of how her day-to-day decisions affect long-term goals. Chances of succeeding increase with a personal trainer, an inaccessible resource for most people.

With Autom, the robot becomes the trainer. It conducts daily conversations that emphasize relationship over goals and provide affirming encouragement and advice. Each 3-4 minute session begins with small talk and data input via a touch screen. Autom only asks about weight once a week (not daily). As evidenced by the difficulty people had in giving the equipment back after testing, the robot engenders trust and attachment.

Why Does This Work?

In the podcast interview, Kidd described the foundational research that supports Autom’s design. He looked at human responses to computers and robots, generating two key insights from the differences:

1. Even accounting for an initial novelty effect, people engaged with the robot more quickly and enduringly than with a computer.
2. When considering the information being disseminated, people find a robot more trustworthy (“The robot is seen as the more immediate thing.”)

These important tidbits come as result of a 6-week experiment involving 45 overweight people who wanted to diet. They were divided into three groups: one got robots, and the other two got either a computer or pencil and paper. All of the weight-loss tracking was done through these tools. For those without Autom, the diet lasted 3-5 weeks. For those with Autom, diets lasted 8 weeks … longer than the study.

Kidd also discussed the properties of embodiment that may play an important role in this connection between human and robot. Having a physical presence is what makes the most difference. Otherwise, effective traints depend on the specific application and context of use. (A list of Cory Kidd’s academic publications can be found at the MIT Media Lab web site.)

While I don’t dispute the results of these inquiries, I wonder if the right question was asked. Is the engagement really a result of the robot form, or does it have more to deal with opportunity and accessibility? Is a combination of social robotics themes responsible for the human-robot connection, or is it simply because the placement of the computer screen embedded in Autom fits into a dieting routine better? A Wii Fit has some overlap with Autom’s role in weight-loss, for example, but it is only accessible in certain places and contexts. I can imagine this study being adapted for other design spaces with special attention paid to where the optimal moments of interaction are situated.

I admire the human-centric origins of Autom, but I am left wondering how much the success was attributed to the robot and how much to other non-robotic distinctions between the tracking methods.