Emotional Design (25 page)

Robots, especially at first, will probably require smooth floors, without obstacles. Door thresholds might have to be eliminated or minimized. Some locations—especially stairways—might have to be especially marked, perhaps with lights, infrared transmitters, or simply special reflective tape. Barcodes or distinctive markers posted here and there in the home would enormously simplify the robot's ability to recognize its location.

Consider how a servant robot might bring a drink to its owner. Ask for a can of soda, and off goes the robot, obediently making its way to the kitchen and the refrigerator, which is where the soda is kept. Understanding the command and navigating to the refrigerator are relatively simple. Figuring out how to open the door, find the can, and extract it is not so simple. Giving the servant robot the dexterity, the strength, and the non-slip wheels that would allow it to pull open the refrigerator door is quite a feat. Providing the vision system that can find the soda, especially if it is completely hidden behind other food items, is difficult, and then figuring out how to extract the can without destroying objects in the way is beyond today's capabilities in robot arms.

How much simpler it would be if there were a drink dispenser robot tailored to the needs of the servant robot. Imagine a drink-dispensing robot appliance capable of holding six or twelve cans, refrigerated, with an automatic door and a push-arm. The servant robot could go to the drink robot, announce its presence and its request (probably by an infrared or radio signal), and place its tray in front of the dispenser. The drink robot would slide open its door, push out a can, and close the door again: no complex vision, no dexterous arm, no forceful opening of the door. The servant robot would receive the can on its tray, and then go back to its owner.

In a similar way, we might modify the dishwasher to make it easier for a home robot to load it with dirty dishes, perhaps give it special trays with designated slots for different dishes. But as long as we are
doing that, why not make the pantry a specialized robot, one capable of removing the clean dishes from the dishwasher and storing them for later use? The special trays would help the pantry as well. Perhaps the pantry could automatically deliver cups to the coffeemaker and plates to the home cooking robot, which is, of course, connected to refrigerator, sink, and trash. Does this sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but, in fact, our household appliances are already complex, many of them with multiple connections to services. The refrigerator has connections to electric power and water. Some are already connected to the internet. The dishwasher and clothes washer have electricity, water and sewer connections. Integrating these units so that they can work smoothly with one another does not seem all that difficult.

I imagine that the home will contain a number of specialized robots: the servant is perhaps the most general purpose, but it would work together with a cleaning robot, the drink dispensing robot, perhaps some outside gardening robots, and a family of kitchen robots, such as dishwasher, coffee-making, and pantry robots. As these robots are developed, we will probably also design specialized objects in the home that simplify the tasks for the robots, coevolving robot and home to work smoothly together. Note that the end result will be better for people as well. Thus, the drink dispenser robot would allow anyone to walk up to it and ask for a can, except that you wouldn't use infrared or radio, you might push a button or perhaps just ask.

I am not alone in imagining this coevolution of robots and homes. Rodney Brooks, one of the world's leading roboticists, head of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and founder of a company that builds home and commercial robots, imagines a rich ecology of environments and robots, with specialized ones living on devices, each responsible to keep its domain clean: one does the bathtub, another the toilet; one does windows, another manipulates mirrors. Brooks even contemplates a robot dining room table, with storage area and dishwasher built into its base so that “when we want to set the table, small robotic arms, not unlike the ones in a jukebox, will bring the required dishes and cutlery out onto the place settings. As each course is finished,
the table and its little robot arms would grab the plates and devour them into the large internal volume underneath.”

What should a robot look like? Robots in the movies often look like people, with two legs, two arms, and a head. But why? Form should follow function. The fact that we have legs allows us to navigate irregular terrain, something an animal on wheels could not do. The fact that we have two hands allows us to lift and manipulate, with one hand helping the other. The humanoid shape has evolved over eons of interaction with the world to cope efficiently and effectively with it. So, where the demands upon a robot are similar to those upon people, having a similar shape might be sensible.

If robots don't have to move—such as drink, dishwasher, or pantry robots—they need not have any means of locomotion, neither legs nor wheels. If the robot is a coffeemaker, it should look like a coffeemaker, modified to allow it to connect to the dishwasher and pantry. Robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers already exist, and their appearance is perfectly suited to their tasks: small, squat devices, with wheels (see
figure 6.3
). A robot car should look like a car. It is only the general-purpose home servant robots that are apt to look like animals or humans. The robot dining room table envisioned by Brooks would be especially bizarre, with a large central column to house the dishes and dishwashing equipment (complete with electric power, water and sewer connections). The top of the table would have places for the robot arms to manipulate the dishes and probably some stalk to hold the cameras that let the arms know where to place and retrieve the dishes and cutlery.

Should a robot have legs? Not if it only has to maneuver about on smooth surfaces—wheels will do for this; but if it has to navigate irregular terrain or stairs, legs would be useful. In this case, we can expect the first legged robots to have four or six legs: balancing is far simpler for four- and six-legged creatures than for those with only two legs.

If the robot is to wander about a home and pick up after the occupants, it probably will look something like an animal or a person: a
body to hold the batteries and to support the legs, wheels, or tracks for locomotion; hands to pick up objects; and cameras (eyes) on top where they can better survey the environment. In other words, some robots will look like an animal or human, not because this is cute, but because it is the most effective configuration for the task. These robots will probably look something like R2D2 (
figure 6.1
): a cylindrical or rectangular body on top of some wheels, tracks, or legs; some form of manipulable arm or tray; and sensors all around to detect obstacles, stairs, people, pets, other robots, and, of course the objects they are supposed to interact with. Except for pure entertainment value, it is difficult to understand why we would ever want a robot that looked like C3PO.

The Roomba is a vacuum cleaner, its shape appropriate for running around the floor and maneuvering itself under the furniture. This robot doesn't look like either a person or an animal, nor should it: its shape fits the task.

In fact, making a robot humanlike might backfire, making it less acceptable. Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, has argued that we are least accepting of creatures that look very human, but that perform
badly, a concept demonstrated in film and theater by the terrifying nature of zombies and monsters (think of Frankenstein's monster) that take on human form, but with inhuman movement and ghastly appearance. We are not nearly so dismayed—or frightened—by nonhuman shapes and forms. Even perfect replicas of humans might be problematic, for even if the robot could not be distinguished from humans, this very lack of distinction can lead to emotional angst (a theme explored in many a science fiction novel, especially Philip K. Dick's
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
and, in movie version,
Blade Runner
). According to this line of argument, C3PO gets away with its humanoid form because it is so clumsy, both in manner and behavior, that it appears more cute or even irritating than threatening.

Robots that serve human needs—for example, robots as pets—should probably look like living creatures, if only to tap into our visceral system, which is prewired to interpret human and animal body language and facial expressions. Thus, an animal or a childlike shape together with appropriate body actions, facial expressions, and sounds will be most effective if the robot is to interact successfully with people.

What emotions will a robot need to have? The answer depends upon the sort of robot we are thinking about, the tasks it is to perform, the nature of the environment, and what its social life is like. Does it interact with other robots, animals, machines, or people? If so, it will need to express its own emotional state as well as to assess the emotions of the people and animals it interacts with.

Think about the average, everyday home robot. These don't yet exist, but some day the house will become populated with robots. Some home robots will be fixed in place, specialized, such as kitchen robots: for example, the pantry, dishwasher, drink dispenser, food dispenser, coffeemaker, or cooking unit robots. And, of course, clothes
washer, drier, iron, and clothes-folding robots, perhaps coupled to wardrobe robots. Some will be mobile, but also specialized, such as the robots that vacuum the floors and mow the lawn. But probably we will also have at least one general-purpose robot: the home servant robot, that brings us coffee, cleans up, does simple errands, and looks after and supervises the other robots. It is the home robot that is of most interest, because it will have to be the most flexible and advanced.

Servant robots will need to interact with us and with the other robots of the house. For the other robots, they could use wireless communication. They could discuss the jobs they were doing, whether or not they were overloaded or idle. They could also state when they were running low on supplies and when they sensed difficulties, problems, or errors and call upon one another for help. But what about when robots interact with people? How will this happen?

Servant robots need to be able to communicate with their owners. Some way of issuing commands is needed, some way of clarifying the ambiguities, changing a command in midstream (“Forget the coffee, bring me a glass of water instead”), and dealing with all of the complexities of human language. Today, we can't do that, so robots that are built now will have to rely upon very simple commands or even some sort of remote controller, where a person pushes the appropriate buttons, generates a well-structured command, or selects actions from a menu. But the time will come when we can interact in speech, with the robots understanding not just the words but the meanings behind them.

When should a robot volunteer to help its owners? Here, robots will need to be able to assess the emotional state of people. Is someone struggling to do a task? The robot might want to volunteer to help. Are the people in the house arguing? The robot might wish to go to some other room, out of the way. Did something bring pleasure? The robot might wish to remember that, so it could do it again when appropriate. Was an action poorly done, so the person showed disappointment? Perhaps the action could be improved, so that next time the robot
would produce better results. For all these reasons, and more, the robot will need to be designed with the ability to read the emotional state of its owners.

A robot will need to have eyes and ears (cameras and microphones) to read facial expressions, body language, and the emotional components of speech. It will have to be sensitive to tones of voice, the tempo of speech, and its amplitude, so that it can recognize anger, delight, frustration, or joy. It needs to be able to recognize scolding voices from praising ones. Note that all of these states can be recognized just by their sound quality without the need to recognize the words or language. Notice that you can determine other people's emotional states just by the tone of voice alone. Try it: Make believe you are in any one of those states—angry, happy, scolding, or praising—and express yourself while keeping your lips firmly sealed. You can do it entirely with the sounds, without speaking a word. These are universal sound patterns.

Similarly, the robot should display its emotional state, much as a person does (or, perhaps more appropriately, as a pet dog or child does), so that the people with whom it is interacting can tell when a request is understood, when it is something easy to do, difficult to do, or perhaps even when the robot judges it to be inappropriate. Similarly, the robot should show pleasure and displeasure, an energetic appearance or exhaustion, confidence or anxiety when appropriate. If it is stuck, unable to complete a task, it should show its frustration. It will be as valuable for the robot to display its emotional state as it is for people to do so. The expressions of the robot will allow us humans to understand the state of the robot, thereby learning which tasks are appropriate for it, which are not. As a result, we can clarify instructions or even offer help, eventually learning to take better advantage of the robot's capabilities.