Undesired Work, Desired Outcome

Last month, I used a conventional wisdom approach to attempt to generate a working definition of robot:

A robot is a physical machine manipulated to automatically perform an undesirable work function that supports a desired human outcome.

This generated a constructive conversation with my advisor about the underlying value statements about both the technology and the humans who might do some of the “undesirable work.”

At the core of this simple definition is a complex assumption: People sometimes don’t want to do the work that produces benefit. At its worst, the interpretation is either laziness or superiority. In the best light, it is a call to appreciate those who do such jobs. This valuation of job function isn’t universal—one person’s chore is another’s passion—but it is still a value judgment on the task at hand and anyone in the situation to perform that task.

Undesired Work with Desired Outcomes

This idea of desirability as it relates to both work and outcome is interesting. We can describe all of the properties and functionality that a robot might entail, but the root question remains: Why a robot?

To explore this concept of desirability, there are a few key questions to ask and answer.

What are the boundaries of desirability?

In my two-dimensional world where benefit is measured in terms of affinity to work and outcome, there should be some point along each dimension where the perception moves from undesired to desired. Are there universally accepted thresholds of desirability? I want to understand the nature of these binary tipping points and how individual perspectives manifest themselves in the design domain. In other words, everyone’s assessment varies of whether or not work is attractive or outcomes are beneficial, and it is unclear to me how much that range overcomes the aggregate. This is a structural question that helps define the environment for robotic design.

How do humans cross boundaries of desirability?

Even before robots are introduced to the dynamics of interaction, humans have to navigate this space, moving from undesired to desired outcomes, or desired to undesired work. Where does playing World of Warcraft or mowing the lawn fit into this environment? How do people’s attitudes change over time and circumstance? Particularly with social robotics, where long-term interaction changes the relationship between humans and robots, understanding the dynamics of judgment might better inform design of the useful life cycle of such robots.

What is the relational impact of human-robot collaboration in each bounded quadrant?

Humans are our main concern here, mainly because the robots are new creatures shaped by humans. When you insert a robot or two into a situation common to one of the four quadrants of desirability, it will affect not just the human relationships with the machines, but also the human-human interaction that surrounds it. Giving a child a robot pet, for example, could have an adverse effect on how that child interacts with parents or friends. There are at least two dimensions at work here: affinity and self-interest. This question deals with the dynamics of agents in the system.

What is a robot?

Ultimately, I have to return to operationalization. My initial attempt at answering this question lacks input from the people who make robots and self-apply that label to their projects. The definition might also be compared to cultural artifacts that contrast what people think they believe and what they express. Although I am doubtful that a unified definition is achievable, the process of attempting to thoroughly answer this question should reveal a nice scaffolding for how to group robotics projects by their properties, function, design motivation and public perception.

Which design spaces would benefit from robotic collaboration?

Once the structure, environment and agent dynamics are understood, we still need to match these insights with real-world scenarios of need. It may prove easier to answer the question of which design spaces would not benefit from robots. From a designer’s perspective, this is a key question whose answers will result in robot imagination, or the optimal use of the medium to help address a need.

What I hope to address with this line of inquiry is that root question—Why a robot?—as it speaks to the state of current and future robotics development from a designer’s perspective. Even without articulating the detail, we can accept that robots exist and hold certain benefits. The disconnect appears to be in grounding the decision of when these benefits really come into play.