A New Face For Robotics

tanmay writes "Android technology has moved a step forward with the creation of a high-tech polymer called 'f'rubber,' which resembles human skin. Its creator, David Hanson has implemented it in a robot called Hertz, as this report from CNN gives us the details. Another question that the report brings up is the need to make robots resemble humans. Ray Kurzweil thinks Hanson's work is significant because realistic facial movement will play an important role in the way future androids respond to humans, and has the following to say, 'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'"

Comments

$100...

[Aardpig]

...says that the first practical use of f'rubber will be in the sex aid industry. How long before we see Stepford Whores?

The Uncanny Valley

[UtilityFog]

The "Uncanny Valley" is a neologism that expresses RK's statement. It's reasonably new in robotics research, as they've only recently gotten to the point where it can apply. See, e.g., http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html ... It's just a hope, of course, that it actually comes up on the other side!

Dr. Who

[rlp]

A Doctor Who episode The Robots of Death has a sub-plot involving 'robophobia'. It was a mental (illness) condition broguht on by close contact with entities that looked and acted human but had no emotions or expressions and were impossible for humans to 'read'. Of course, that's fiction. However, in the 1980's car makers added a 'feature' to luxury cars, where the car would 'speak' to the driver and passengers. ("A door is ajar! A door is ajar!"). People hated this, and it was quickly abandoned. I briefly had a rental car with a 'voice' - and found it annoying. I'm not sure that making machines look a little bit human is a good thing.

Re:Dr. Who

[lambent]

actually ...

i was lucky enough to be in possession of one of these 'freak' cars for awhile. 1984 Nissan Maxima. Once my friends learned that it 'spoke', they would go to no ends to to hear that metallic (female) voice.

I loved driving down the highway only to suddenly hear, "right door is open".

It was the hight of coolness.

On the otherhand, my fuel gauge was sticky. So, even though I knew I had 2 gallons and ~40 miles left to go, I would be bombarded every 5 minutes with "fuel level is low".

THAT, the sub-par 'intelligence' that thought that i was the stupid one, was much much worse than the freaky metallic-death drone of my constant female copilot, which was actually pretty kick-ass.

And don't get me started on that piece-of-shit self-bagger at the grocery store.

Re:New Scientist recently covered this as well

[another misanthrope]

I swear I previewed first! Anyways - the link (and I ) are wrong - here is the correct address:

from the Houston Chronicle Burning question Should robots look human?

Which Side? Re:The Uncanny Valley

[StefanJ]

I think that lifelike rubber skin is an attempt to push robots up the slope of the *right* side of the valley, toward human realism.

This is going to be really tough.

I would push the other way, toward "unfamiliar but intriguing." Make them clean and symmetrical, out of shiny materials.

Stefan

Uncanny Valley-ness, not F'rubber is the issue.

[mynameis (mother ...]

The basic problem is should they be really anthropomorphic or not.

In the article they mention the 'Mori Uncanniness' problem- there is a point that is the 'most anthropomorphic' you can get, before the thing becomes about as pleasant as santorum. IANARS, but the RS's at CMU's Robotics Institute state in A Survey of socially interactive robots

[if a robot needs to portray a living creature,] it is critical that an appropriate degree of familiarity be maintained. Mashiro Mori contends that the progression from a non-realistic to realistic portrayal of a living thing is non-linear. In particular, there is an ?uncanny valley? (see Fig. 8) as similarity becomes almost, but not quite perfect. At this point, the subtle imperfections of the recreation become highly disturbing, or even repulsive...

FWIW There are many more issues than just cannyness, and that paper gets into a lot of em...

Re:Why bother looking human

[Stigmata669]

On the other hand, Final Fantasy The Spirits Within had some of the most incredible CG humans I've ever seen, and as a result I realized that their human model was a really bad actor, suffering from overdone facial expressions etc.

Having robots with human features can enhance its ability to communicate. A prof from Carnegie Mellon gave a talk about museum robots who roamed a set area offering tours etc. The robots were more successful in both getting and holding peoples' attention if they were programmed to display a face.

In the USA, that'd be a plot hole, Bob.

[tepples]

Your request for human status has been denied.

Workaround in the USA: make a corporation owned by the robot's "family" that owns the robot's hardware and owns everything the robot "owns." Then you get a "person[] ... naturalized in the United States" and thus, under the corporate personhood interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, a "citizen[] of the United States."

got it wrong

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

It is not at all disturbing, he was simpling showing how you and I are more likely to recognize that the computer has sub-human intelligence if the computer looks like a human.

If the computer looked like something else, subconsciously you wouldn't have the direct link to appearance to use as a reference for the machine's smarts ... you might think it is a lot more intelligent than it is.

Do you have any trouble identifying when a human obviously has low intelligence? no. Would you have trouble identifying when an android has low intelligence ... maybe not if it didn't look human.

see, nothing disturbing, just human nature.

Robots Should Choose Themselves

[EM Adams]

Any sufficiently intelligent entity that is going to be implanted into a cybernetic body should be able to
1) Choose from a group of predesigned body shapes
or
Design their own from scratch (I'm sure eventually...)
2) Modify them afterwards depending on their judgements of reactions towards them.
IANAAI (Artificial Intelligence) but such entities may find that one of the greatest challenges to its own evolution and interaction with the physical or virtual reality at hand depends greatly on the appearance it takes.

I met this guy

[3Suns]

I met David Hanson two years ago at the AAAI conference in Edmonton, Canada. He hung out with our robotics team for a couple days during the conference where he was demonstrating his (really freaky) robot heads and we were competing in the robot host competition. He's a very artistic guy, and about as enthusiastic as they come. I'm glad to see he's starting to make it big.

Funny thing is, the Ray Kurzweil (who was also at the conference) quote in the article sounds like a conversation I had with David. Our robot, built to serve hors d'oeuvres in a coctail party environment, was designed to look like a table, rather than a butler (Although it had a pan/tilt/zoom camera for a "head"). The idea was to improve on people's expectations of a table rather than disappoint people expecting a real human. Kurzweil's quote sounds like something I probably said to David: "Better to build a smart piece of furniture than a stupid human."

Robots should be robots.

[mrselfdestrukt]

I don't know. Maybe it's just me but I like the way robots look. The mechanical movements and crude metal just make them look so cool and they should not try to make robots to imitate humans bt rather make robots to be the best robot for the job it is designed to do. I've always wondered why the robots in terminator had to have metal skulls like humans except for easthetic value. Why would you want to pull a rubber mask over a work of art to try and make it look more acceptable to a human? And someone will probably complain about the colour of the skins on them regardless of what the colour is...