Although humanity was hoping for a more optimistic robotic future in the post-war era, with media reflecting that sentiment like The Jetsons or Lost in Space, we seem to have shifted our collective consciousness (for good reasons) to a more Black Mirror/Terminator future as real-world companies like Boston Dynamics are actually building these styles of machines instead of helpful Rosies. But this future isn’t guaranteed, and a PhD researcher is hoping to claim back a more hopeful outlook with a robot called Blossom which is specifically built to investigate how humans interact with robots.
For a platform this robot is not too complex, consisting of an accessible frame that can be laser-cut from wood with only a few moving parts controlled by servos. The robot is not too large, either, and can be set on a desk to be used as a telepresence robot. But Blossom’s creator [Michael] wanted this to help understand how humans interact with robots so the latest version is outfitted not only with a large language model with text-to-speech capabilities, but also with a compelling backstory, lore, and a voice derived from Animal Crossing that’s neither human nor recognizable synthetic robot, all in an effort to make the device more approachable.
To that end, [Michael] set the robot up at a Maker Faire to see what sorts of interactions Blossom would have with passers by, and while most were interested in the web-based control system for the robot a few others came by and had conversations with it. It’s certainly an interesting project and reminds us a bit of this other piece of research from MIT that looked at how humans and robots can work productively alongside one another.
I feel many universities and corporations have studied human robots interactions ad nauseum.
If I end up talking to a robot, there will always be the suspicion it is recording my words and actions for commercial exploitation.
Yes, I am aware that many corporate support lines and chat and “let’s chat” web pages already use AI to “assist” me in solving my problem.
Hey, look at the bright side… They might be like the robots from the short story “Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32032/32032-h/32032-h.htm
That one will probably also collect and sell your data, actually. I mean why wouldn’t it
The plot shares similarities to the ’95 film “Screamers”, I think.
Screamers was indeed based on the short story! Philip K. Dick has a whole lot of stealth film adaptations out there.
I wonder if we will ever have a version of VALIS which is hallucinatory, paranoid, and religious enough to do it justice. I’m glad dentists no longer give you piles of scopolamine for routine operations, but it certainly was an inspiration for poor Philip Dick.
That’s cool! My father and me love reading classic sci-fi novels like this!
(He used to collect Perry Rhodan and Atlan novel booklets from ca. the 1960s.)
Thank you very much for mentioning the short story and his author! :)
Well, there went my evening, and I was supposed to be packing for our Thanksgiving travel.
B^)
Toxic cloud-based practices are bad, but at least the threats are well-understood and reassuringly dumb.
What really bothers me with self-checkout machines, chatbots and the like is the artistic implications. Folks, when you make a robot you’re making an image of a human soul – is THIS what you think a person is like?
The design is very human
It’s cute, but I wonder if it could help me with daily activities. Speech to text and TTS are good when you can run local AI models that respect your privacy. But also could perform a quick wikipedia search. I know wiki is offline available.
Look like a Voodoo plush to me.
In the Netherlands there is a care robot called Tessa, which looks like a flowerpot https://www.aal-europe.eu/tessa/
It’s aimed ate people with (beginning) dementia. Another “robot” doing well with these people is the Hasbro companion cat for seniors. It shouldn’t be to difficult to retrofit that with an audio board running an llm.