Insights from MIT

Two videos from 2008 came on my radar this past weekend. One was a panel discussion on Sociable Robots, moderated by NPR’s Bruce Gellerman and featuring Cynthia Breazeal and Sherry Turkle. The other was a lecture by Breazeal on Personal Robots, in which she introduced Nexi, a Mobile Dexterous Social (MDS) robot created by the MIT Media Lab.

As director of the Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, Breazeal is interested in developing technologies that engage people in human terms. Her doctoral work, Kismet, is an anthropomorphic robotic head capable of conveying emotions through facial expressions. Turkle is the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. For the past two decades, she has studied how people relate to the digital world. Recently, Turkle has focused on the study of robots, digital pets, and simulated creatures. Mixing these two perspectives brought up a few interesting themes about designing social robots.

Robots are Also for Reflection and Communication

Two of the robot types Breazeal highlighted while sharing her work stood out as new additions to my previous list: Research robots, and Robot-mediated communication. The former exists not to perform some function in a social setting, but rather to allow humans to study themselves. By creating a mechanical mirror of our behavior, we can test our understanding of what makes use human. With the Huggable—a remote-controlled teddy bear robot—Breazeal also suggests robots can be considered a new medium for communication with others. The bear is meant to relay situational information to a remote operator, who can then control the bear’s expression, gestures and focus to create a physical avatar for interpersonal relationships.

Living Rooms are the Final Frontier

Breazeal begins most discussions of robots noting that, because they are creatures that live in the physical world, they are subject to the laws of physics. Because people live in that world, too, robots are also governed by human minds that interpret and act. The navigation of physical spaces is only part of the problem. A robot placed amongst humans is defined by and must respond to human perception. “The final frontier is your living room,” says Breazeal. “That is the most complicated environment you can possibly imagine.”

Long-Term is Too Short

When Breazeal talked about a project involving robots and weight loss, she indicated that it was a long-term study. In robotics, however, “long-term” is anything lasting from 2-6 weeks. The novelty of having a robot available to interact with you every day apparently wears off before it embeds itself into a personal routine. The research claims the robotic form helped prolong engagement, but there are other factors that might be considered (relative effectiveness of the tested devices, conversational intelligence, etc.).

While it is certainly true that that technology needs to advance further before it will achieve the developer’s ideal, a designer might argue that anything that fails to be adopted into a person’s routine probably isn’t meeting a real need. This revelation reinforces my suspicion that a more human-centered path of inquiry could lead to a more engaging robots.

Human Connection Doesn’t Need Human Form

Referencing a 2004 ad for the Apple iMac G4 and an early Pixar short film, Breazeal suggested that people can share non-verbal communication even with everyday artifacts. This is evident in projects like RoCo—a robot computer designed to invite and encourage beneficial movement during use—and the flexible AWE robot wall. This could support the notion that we don’t need to go out of our way to reflect the human form in order to communicate in a human manner.

Any Difference Between Perception & Programming?

A big challenge for robotics research is imbuing robots with a means to perceive non-verbal cues. This is important if there is to be a real connective communication between human and robot. Breazeal’s group has explored this question with Leonardo, an expressive learning robot. Likening the early training of artificial intelligence to teaching a toddler, she described tests where Leo was able to track where a doll was placed and associate value judgments with different objects. While clearly impressive feats of engineering, it also has an air of verbal programming. In the process of raising three kids of my own, the demonstrations with Leo lacked a certain authenticity as it obediently responded to cues from authority.

Robot Relationships are Something New

Both Breazeal and Turkle implied that while there are many similarities with other forms of relationships, humans will connect with robots in different way than they do appliance, pets, or other humans. Turkle applies the term “technological promiscuity” to convey the perhaps inevitable willingness of people to form meaningful connections with embodied tech. It isn’t a question of mistaking a robot for a human; it is accepting the simulated human behavior as an acceptable substitute.

“Nurturers turns out to be the killer app in robotics,” said Turkle. The fantasy of human-robot relationships, though, is in the expectation that because you nurture them, they will reciprocate. This comes about because people focus on a robot’s performance, not it’s inner state. We can understand that a robot doesn’t love as we feel loved through its behavior.

Human Expectations Change

Turkle suggests that we are in the midst of an evolution in how we perceive communication itself, brought on by the lightweight tools designed to reflect status. She calls this state of readiness to form meaningful relationships with the inanimate the “robotic moment.”

Instant Messaging and microblogging are not intended to open dialogue about our complexity, but we can still feel enough of a sense of connection with people that the hypothetical Dunbar Number becomes more of a fallacy. The trade-off is, perhaps, a fundamental change in what is required to be in a relationship. As our expectations lower, our relationships can thrive with superficiality. It opens the door for human-robot connection, even if “we don’t always know when we’ve been close, when we’re alone.”

Authenticity is a Contextual Value

Turkle told a great story about a trip to a museum where the children saw an exhibit featuring live turtles from the Gallapagos Islands. Upon seeing the lack of mobility of one of the turtles, one kid suggested that the museum would have been better served with a robot. This prompted a research discussion about aliveness, with most of the kids in favor of a robot. A father listening to this conversation countered that being real is the whole point. This is part of Turkle’s robotic moment, where in certain contexts authenticity is not needed to create a valued experience.

On the flip side is a second anecdote about an elderly man in a care facility. He talks about how, though lack of skill or meanness, the humans in charge hurt him. “A robot would never pull you by the hair or tubes,” he admits. However, instead of embracing the perceived safety of the robot caretaker, the man prefers the hurtful humans. People have a story. Even the unpleasant person made him feel more alive, because their authenticity provided a connection to the human narrative.

According to Turkle, kids are referring to things as “sort of alive,” as if it were a new category of being.

Experience Changes What is Uncanny

All discussions of the aesthetics of robots eventually turn to the Uncanny Valley, a hypothesis that claims people start to revolt from robotic forms as they approach human. Despite not being supported by research, this thinking pervades robotics and even influences design (such as is the case with Asimo). Turkle reminded us that the origin of the word come from Freudian notions of familiar things seeming foreign, an uncomfortable but not necessarily frightening experience. In some cases, the technology advances to find a sweet spot in human reaction (look at what happened in CGI as it grew up from the Tin Toy baby to Shrek). Mostly, there might be some universal aversion when first encountering robots with near-human features.

What happens when the new experience becomes old? Is it really that a creepy looking fake baby always looks creepy, or could prolonged experience allow it’s behavioral performance to dominate? Appearances certainly help open the door for human relationships, but people who appear repulsive to some can still win other over with their minds and hearts. “It’s about our human vulnerability as much as the robot’s competence,” said Turkle.

The talks also pointed to a few additions to my reading list, including:

• Ahn, H., Teeters, A., Wang, A., Breazeal, C., and Picard, R. (2007). Stoop to conquer: Posture and affect interact to influence computer users’ persistence. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international Conference on Affective Computing and intelligent interaction (Lisbon, Portugal, September 12 – 14, 2007). A. C. Paiva, R. Prada, and R. W. Picard, Eds. Lecture Notes In Computer Science, vol. 4738, pp. 582-593.
• Heider, F., and Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behaviour. American Journal of Psychology, 13. (video)
• Levy, D. (2007). Love and sex with robots. HarperCollins.
• Riskind, J. (1984). They stoop to conquer: Guiding and self-regulatory functions of physical posture after success and failure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, pp. 479-493.
• Turkle, S. (2008). Falling for science: Objects in mind. MIT Press.
• Vogeley, K., Bussfeld, P., Newen, A., Herrmann, S., Happe, F., Falkai, P., Maier, W., Shah, N.J., Fink, G.R., and Zilles, K. (2001). Mind reading: Neural mechanisms of theory of mind and self-perspective. Neuroimage, 14(1), pp. 170-181. (PDF)