WEBVTT - Techstuff Classic: The Sad Tale of Hitchbot 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.040 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.040 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.920 how Stuff Works in a love all things tech, and 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.920 you are listening to a classic episode of tech Stuff. 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.600 This one is about the sad tale of hitch Bot, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:33.920 a robot designed to hitchhike across North America, and how 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.960 it journeyed across Canada and then met a rather untimely 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:42.279 end in the United States spoiler alert. And this episode 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:46.240 features guest host Scott Benjamin, who joins us to talk 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:50.880 about Hitchbot and the somewhat tragic comedic tale. I hope 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:56.680 you enjoy this classic episode. On July two thousand fourteen, 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:03.160 Hitchhiker began a historic journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:08.600 get to Victoria, British Columbia, on the other side of Canada. 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:13.759 We're talking crossing the entire width of Canada. And if 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.679 you were to do that on the most efficient route possible, 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.880 if you got to choose the route that would be 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.480 at minimum around three thousand, six hundred forty four miles 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:29.000 or five thousand, eight hundred sixty four kilometers. However, hitchhikers 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:34.399 rarely have the ability to call exactly what route needs 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.440 to be taken. They are at the mercy of the 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.240 drivers that pick them up. Sure, I'm just I'm headed west, exactly, 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:42.640 take me as far as you're going. And not that 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.160 I condone hitchhiking or anything like that. That's kind of dangerous. 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:47.720 It can be, and we will definitely get into some 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:52.760 danger territory. Part of this conversation, well, the full trip 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.600 took closer to ten thousand kilometers or about sixty two 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.080 hundred miles. Uh. And here's the weird part. The hitchhiker 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.919 was a robot. Ah, that is weird. Yeah, not a person. 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:06.760 I've never picked up a hitchhiker. In fact, for a 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.880 long time, I had never even seen one. Uh saw 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.919 a lot in Hawaii. Surfer culture is still going strong. Yeah, 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:16.480 there's certain parts of the United States that you can 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.720 expect to see more hitchhikers than than other parts. Right, 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.320 And uh, in Hawaii, I guess would be one of 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.639 those places. I've been there too, and I know exactly 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.720 what we're talking about. I think I've seen more hitchhikers 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.960 in Hawaii standing at bus stops attempting to hit your ride, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.760 just hoping to catch a ride before that bus shows up. 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:35.480 You know, it's like one or the other. Eventually a 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.880 bust will come. But if in the meantime, if I 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:39.720 can just get a free ride down the road, That's 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:41.640 what I'll do. I've just seen lots and lots of 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.519 surfers trying to trying to get to the beach, trying 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.320 to catch that next wave. That's right, man, you can't. 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.520 The waves wait for no one. And so we're talking 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:54.000 about Hitchbot, which a lot of you have probably heard about. 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.680 Hitchbot made the news first made the news in two 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:59.679 thousand and fourteen during this historic attempt to get a 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:03.120 rope out to hitchhike across all of Canada successful. It 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.160 was successful, so spoiler alert there, and then went on 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:10.760 to do this again in Germany. It went all over Germany, 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.280 and it also took a little vacation in the Netherlands. 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.080 And then finally there was an attempt for this robot 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:19.440 to hitchhike its way across the United States, which was 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.440 cut short. Just like the robot. This all sounds so nice. 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.079 What could possibly go wrong? So you might be wondering 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.680 I've heard about this, what actually is going on. The 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.120 first thing I want to say is, while we're talking 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:37.320 about a hitchhiking robot, Honestly, if I were to describe this, 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:40.360 I would not have used the word robot. Yeah, it's 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.000 it's They're using a term very loosely here. I think 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.800 it's because the form factor makes it look sort of 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:50.880 like a robot. Uh. And it definitely had the beterfit 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.520 of having like a light display that that made a 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.200 very simple smiley face, so you had kind of a 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:00.600 you know, ahead that you could identify. But really we're 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.800 really talking about a hitchhiking computer. It's just a hitchhiking 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.240 computer that was in a more or less static robot body. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.360 It's simple, but they found a way to anthropomorphosize this 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:12.880 thing to the point where people look at it and said, oh, 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:15.360 that's kind of cute. Yeah, because it has a torso, 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.280 it's got arms and legs. Arms and legs don't move 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:24.400 the torso. Static torsos a bucket um literally bucket, yeah, 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.200 and literally a bucket. It does have solar panels that 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.680 are arranged on the outside of the bucket, so that's 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.279 one of the ways that the robot gets electricity. The 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:36.599 other is that it will ask people to plug it 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.960 into the a lighter socket on a in a car. Yeah, 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.000 it's only about three ft tall, so it's very small. 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:46.600 That's waterproof, which is kind of surprising. It's waterproof, but 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:50.120 it is well and also, I mean it wears waterproof boots. 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.719 Every single article, every article without fail, talks about the 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:59.400 fact that it wears welliest. The brand name boot Yeah, okay, 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.279 like like a rubber boot. It's a named after the 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.120 Duke of weg Well. It's arms are what pool noodles, 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:08.279 so you know, it's not it's not like they went 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.080 to two great lengths to try to make this thing 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:12.720 look human or anything like that. But it does have 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:14.960 arms and legs. It does have a face as you mentioned, 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.600 has um a it almost looks like a Tupperware container 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:20.640 on the top looks like a hat, a beret or 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:24.760 something like that. Um that's designed to to actually protect 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:29.320 the the electronics the tablet computer that is running the 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.919 software that the robot so used likely part of the 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.480 waterproofing overall, I guess, and um it's GPS equipped. The 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:38.560 thing weighs about twenty five pounds total. So it's not 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.920 that heavy. Right, has its own built in seat. That's 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:44.120 it's like a car seat almost that well, it is 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.839 a car seat from a kid's car seat that you 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:48.960 can then put in your car and buckle in, so 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:50.560 it's secure when it's in there. It's not gonna fly 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.320 around the vehicle loose, you know, it's something were to happen. Right, 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.800 And and it's legs are not powered, they are statics. 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:58.800 So the way that you would set this up when 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:00.640 you are done carrying it as far as you want 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.159 to carry it is the seat also has essentially a 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.520 lever that can fold down into a tripod like position, 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.000 so the two legs act as two of the legs 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:14.440 of the tripod. This lever access the third and if 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:16.240 you were to pick it up, you could fold that 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.640 arm back up against the seat, so that would allow 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:22.560 you to put it into your vehicle and secure the 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:24.799 car seat. And as if you were in an area 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:26.159 that you wanted to set it up on the side 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:27.800 of the road, that was you know, like a field 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:29.960 or something where there's nowhere for it to sit, like 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:31.680 on a bench or maybe in a wall or something 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.760 right right, and uh, you know, like I said, it 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.400 was running on essentially a tablet PC that if you 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:42.360 looked at all the equipment according to the website, Uh, 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:45.800 it cost about a thousand dollars, maybe a little less. 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.680 And that was a calculated decision. They wanted that. They, 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:51.760 being the team behind this, and I'll talk about them 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.880 in a second, wanted the robot to be inexpensive enough 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:58.640 where it would not be an obvious target for someone 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:00.920 to just steal the component out of it. They wanted 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.039 it to be uh, accessible, They wanted it to be cute. 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.240 They wanted it to be something that people would want 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:11.000 to interact with and to have enough of an ability 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:16.160 to have interactions, including holding a conversation sort of yeah, 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.960 kind of. Yeah, we're being real generous with the term conversation. 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:22.800 That's one thing that you and I talked about off 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.640 air is that every conversation we've ever seen with this, 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.760 you know that between a human and hitchpot it was 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.480 awkward to say the least. I mean it was it 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:34.320 kind of it kind of picked up on what what 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.600 the even was saying, but not entirely. It didn't quite 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:40.760 get the gist of the conversation, and it would respond 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.200 in an awkward way. Yeah, it had. It had a 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.840 microphone so it could pick up on what people were saying, 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:50.040 and a speaker so it could then return and communicate back. 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.120 And a big problem with that was probably the the 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.960 vast array of dialects that was dealing with, right, and 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.080 just the fact that our spoken language is incredibly pla 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.160 stick and adaptive, and there are so many different ways 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.400 to say the same thing that it can be difficult 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.080 for you know, it's like a non native speaker of 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.400 any language, you might be taught how to say or 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.720 ask for something a very specific way, and that specific 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.080 way is still correct, it's not incorrect, but it's just 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:22.760 one way to say that, to express that thought. And 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.760 in most languages there are lots of different ways to 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.640 express the same thought, and you're familiar with one of them, 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:32.080 so if anyone comes up to you and uses a 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.840 different one, you could be completely confused, even though you 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.200 know one way of saying it that you understand all 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:41.920 these other ways don't. Same thing with computers. If you 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.880 train a computer using machine learning on what certain phrases mean, 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.200 that's great, the computer might be able to identify that. 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.080 But if someone were to ask for the same sort 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.319 of thing, but word it slightly differently. That can be 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.440 enough to throw a computer off, because the disease are 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:04.280 subtle things that we humans can intuitively grasp, but computers 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:07.320 lack intuition. And there's not only the word problem. There's 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.680 also the way that it's said. So the you know, 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.360 the the regions, zones, like you know, here in the South, 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:15.480 people talk different than they do in the Pacific, the 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:20.000 Pacific Northwest that's the herd, or the Northeast or you know, 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:24.520 the South, the Northeast talk faster than I can hear. Yea, 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.120 So it's different. It's different, not only um, you know, 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.559 just the different languages, like of course this thing had 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:32.480 to learn German, had to learn uh you know dotch 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.440 I guess had to know French to get through all 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.120 of Canada. Sure yeah, exactly right, and of course English 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.000 and you know, and not only that, but the different 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.680 dialects along the way. Sure yeah, So lots of challenges here. 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.560 But the whole goal was not The goal really, I 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.200 don't think, was to have a robot hitchhike from one 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:53.280 end of Canada to another. That was sort of the 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:57.360 the face of this project. The actual goal was more 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:01.160 of an artistic expression as well as an experiment and 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.160 robot human interactions, because the thing could have been picked 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:07.240 up right at the right at the start, right the 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:09.920 very first day, and driven all the way across by 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.800 one person, you know, on a long haul truck or something, 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.040 and what would be the adventure and that one would 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.520 be the fund The idea was that this relies on 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.520 human interaction and human kindness to get this thing from 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:23.640 one place to the next, kind of take care of 0:10:23.679 --> 0:10:26.439 this thing and along the way have kind of a 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:28.040 checklist of things that they wanted to do. Now, I 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.000 don't know if the Canadian trip had a checklist. I 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.720 don't think it did. Uh. The USA trip did have 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:36.120 a checklist which was was started um. But the Canadian 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.400 trip um, you know, just for instance, you know, it 0:10:38.640 --> 0:10:41.360 twenty six days to get across um, you know, the 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:46.080 entire nation there. But it did things like attend to wedding, um, 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.000 it was dancing in Saskatchewan. It it met some of 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.199 the Canadians First Nations people, uh, some of the Aboriginal 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:56.280 people um that were um, you know, native to Canada. 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.480 And it did all kinds of things. I mean, it 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:02.040 went to you know, parks, went to scening locations, and 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.240 all the time it was snapping photographs because this programmed 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.080 to take a photo every twenty minutes, and it could 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:13.920 tweet out that information. So it's interactions were uh doubled, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.000 and that it could interact in person to people who 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.959 are around it and actually attempt to have a conversation 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.880 and interject. In fact, I read one report of people 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:26.559 who had picked up the robot and they said, yeah, 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.200 it was weird. There were three of us in the 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.240 car plus the robot, and we would the three of 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.240 us be talking, and the robot would interject and interrupt 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.880 us and often say something that is completely not connected 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.240 to any of the rest of the conversation. And I thought, 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.440 I've written in cars with people like that, you know, 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.120 just just someone just pipes up with a total non 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:52.040 sequite or and you think, are are we in the 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:54.360 car with a crazy person? What's that have to do 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:56.320 with the price of eggs in China? Yeah, something along 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.680 those lines, and so, uh, you know that that was 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:03.000 definitely part of it. I think there was certainly an 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.160 an element of let's see how humans treat robots, and 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.319 also let's see how we can design a robot that 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.080 from the get go is meant to interact with humans 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.440 because one of the things we're starting to see increasingly 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:23.320 in technology is the robotic sphere and the human sphere colliding. 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.640 Like there then and by design, we want robots in 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:30.520 our lives. People have named their room bas for example, 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.360 they have given their room bas uh. You know, they've 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:38.600 they've imprinted upon them this idea of a personality. Something 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.319 happens in that room, but you know, I'm sad, you're 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:42.840 gonna be well, i'd be sad to be out, you know, 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:47.440 two bucks on that. That's another thing, there's that side. 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.720 But you know, if something happens to Fred, yeah, don't 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.480 name your room BA. Right, Yeah, but that's true. Is 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:56.520 a lot of people do name these these robots. People 0:12:56.600 --> 0:13:00.240 get emotionally invested in these machines, and so there is 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:05.440 this growing field of research of human robotic interactions. How 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:11.160 can we one capitalize on this need for humans to 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:16.559 have an emotional attachment to these these otherwise emotionless beings, 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:21.000 these beings that lack of consciousness, lack emotions. How can 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.240 we capitalize on that so that the interactions are are 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:26.920 useful and meaningful in some way, even if it's only 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:29.520 meaningful for the human. If it's impossible for it to 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.920 be meaningful for the robot, that's okay, if it's still 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:35.280 meaningful for the human, or how do we design robots 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:40.120 that are specifically meant to not evoke that reaction because 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:44.520 it would be just you know, another distraction from whatever 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.720 the robot is supposed to do, or maybe that whatever 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.080 the robot is supposed to do is inherently dangerous and 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:54.480 should not you know, you don't want to encourage human 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.959 interaction if if a robot is meant to do something 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.120 like dig into rubble, you don't want people to you know, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.560 worry about the robot. The whole reason the robots digging 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:06.520 into rouble in the first place is likely to look 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.000 for survivors in the in the fall out of a 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:13.480 building collapse or something. Sure, or well, just to prevent 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.840 having to have a human do the same thing. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.240 and that's really I mean, the way that a lot 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.920 of robotics experts see robots really taking off, at least 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.680 in the near future, is they'll be used to do 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:32.480 jobs that are either too dirty, dull, or dangerous for humans. 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:38.040 So jobs that are incredibly repetitive and don't require much thought. 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.280 Robots are perfect for that. Also, robots don't sustain like 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:46.360 repetitive injuries. You know, you do have to continuously maintain them. 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.880 You can't just expect them to work forever. But they 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.360 don't get carbal tunnel syndrome for unless they can fix themselves. 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.280 Right then we we will get to that point eventually. 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.120 And dangerous. Obviously you don't want, you know, you would 0:14:58.160 --> 0:14:59.440 want to be able to use a robot and a 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.720 dangerous that situation so that you're not putting human life 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.720 at risk, but with the goal of being able to 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.520 use it again and again and again. Right. So, but 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:09.560 those robots probably don't need to have a lot of 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:14.160 human interactivity. They're designed to do something that they're replacing 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.080 a human, not interacting with a human. But at the 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:20.280 same time, we are seeing this growing industry of robots 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.120 that are designed to be around us in our daily lives, 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:27.360 either as a telepresence style robot where the robot is 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.400 standing in as a surrogate for an actual person, and 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.000 you might have like an iPad or something like that 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:37.320 as a head where someone can skype in. And this 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.280 is always creepy whenever I see it done anywhere but 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.160 I keep being told it's the way of the future. 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:46.120 I have never actually interacted directly with one in an 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:48.400 official capacity, but I've seen them at c ES. Now 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.240 I'm gonna I'm gonna make a reference to something that 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.520 I have nothing, I have no personal interaction with. I 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.680 believe my wife was telling me about a movie recently 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.320 called her and it was a man who fell in 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.640 love with the rating system and uh and the voice 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:05.480 that that that that operating system had. Now I can 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.600 see something like that. And let's see. You get a refrigerator, 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.160 and refrigerators have screens on the Now ours does hear it? 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:11.920 How stuff works? And it's got a screen, but it 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.200 doesn't talk to us, But it does have a screen. 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:15.720 You can interact, and there's a lot of different things 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.320 you can do with that screen, including putting a wacky 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.520 background image on it, as someone did when they put 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:27.560 in the UM, the symbol for the evil organization from 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.160 loss UM. I could see if if it was talking 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.920 to you every day and had a likable voice, something 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.880 that you felt comfortable interacting with um that you know, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:39.000 I could see somebody saying, why I'd be sad to 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.200 get rid of that refrigerator in in five years. Well, 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:44.560 especially if you would come home after a long day 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.960 and your refrigerator says, hi, would you like a frosty 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.440 adult beverage? I mean, you know you're gonna have a 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.480 bond with that machine immediately. Yeah. So but there there's 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.840 this whole discipline that's coming up, like how do we 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:01.240 how do we define these interactions? How do we shape them? Uh? 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:03.280 And a lot of it means you have to do 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:05.760 study on both sides. You have to do a study 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:08.199 on the robot side like what works and what doesn't, 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.560 and you actually have to study human psychology how do 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:16.320 humans respond to robots and at what point do humans 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:20.240 end up treating robots as if they are alive, as 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.160 if they're living creatures. And for a while people were thinking, um, well, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.840 the robot's gonna need to look like something biological already, 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:29.440 Like it's gonna have to be like a robot dog 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.600 or a robot you know, android type person, almost like 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.240 a like a crash test dummy where it looks like 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:36.560 a human but you can tell it's not a real human. 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:39.240 And it turns out that's not necessarily true, because, as 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.400 we've already said, people have been naming the room bus, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:43.720 people get emotionally invested. It turns out that we are 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.560 if it looks animate, if it appears to behave based 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.600 upon its own decisions, whether it's true or not. If 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.480 it if it looks like it's doing that, we start 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.959 to kind of in our minds give it these qualities. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.560 Scott and I have a lot more to talk about 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:04.280 in this classic tech stuff episode, but first let's take 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:15.360 a quick break to thank our sponsor. So a lot 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:19.719 of this really was studying that, like this idea of 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:23.080 the way people and machines are interacting and how that 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.199 is becoming defined over time and what we might need 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.040 to think about in that respect, and also just kind 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:32.359 of a you know, it's a happy story about how 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:38.600 people find joy in h a silly I mean, really 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.199 you get down to it, it's a silly robot, not 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.320 a bad robot. It's a silly robot. And and the 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:50.520 the experience of discovery and sharing that with other people. 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:53.240 That was a big part of this project too, and 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:55.640 it was really successful for three out of the four 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.320 big things that it did. The one that wasn't so 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:04.200 successful and was the United States. So um, really quickly, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:06.199 before we get into the us stuff. I was going 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.400 to talk about some of the folks who designed and 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.840 came up with this idea. Uh. The two leads who 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.840 first came up with the concept for Hitchbot, we're David 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:23.400 Harris Smith and Franca Zeller. And I probably am mispronouncing 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:28.320 Mrs Ellera Fraca Zeller. It's a name that I am. 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.280 I was not familiar with, totally new for me. And 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:35.440 they're out of port Credit, Ontario. Yes, and uh. Smith 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:38.720 is assistant professor at McMaster University in the Department of 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:43.480 Communication Studies. Zeller is an assistant professor in the School 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:47.960 of Professional Communication at Ryerson University Communications professors. Now, this 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:52.320 makes perfect sense because they're they're fishing for the way 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:54.919 people interact with this. They want to find out exactly 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:59.600 how people respond to this, how how he respond to them. Uh, 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.280 this in reaction is really really interesting for these people 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.840 in particular, I'm sure right. And Zella, she got her PhD. 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.680 Her thesis was on human robot interaction. Well this is 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:12.800 it then, Yeah, And they were joined by a lot 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:15.160 of other people. I've just got a couple of names 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.800 I'll mention, but the team itself is quite large. You 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.679 can actually read up on all of them on the website. 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.120 It's funny because the way the website is written, it's 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:28.360 written from Hitchbot's perspective. So hitch it's Hitchbot saying, Oh, 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:30.280 this is the person who helped me learn how to 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:32.320 talk and it's very cute. This is the person that 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.240 takes care of my electronics on a daily basis. I 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:37.480 think they're about fourteen or fifteen people on that team. 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.040 It's a big team. Is a large team, not just 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:42.800 the two two leads here, right, So you've got people 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:46.320 like a Colin or a Gadget who is a developer 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.119 of hitchbot, and he's also a McMaster University student. He 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:52.480 helped design and test hitchbot to make sure it would 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:57.160 be able to withstand the various environments that it would encounter. 0:20:57.480 --> 0:20:59.439 Keep in mind, this was summer in Canada, so it 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:01.320 wasn't going to have to deal with a Canadian winter 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:06.040 than summer. Yeah, it's a little bit different from the 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:10.919 Atlanta summers. Slightly slightly less warm and humid, about sixty 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:15.760 degrees cooler fahrenheit. That is, um, they're not Celsius. That 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.200 would be pretty incredible. Uh So then you had Davin Bigelow, 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.840 who was an undergraduate student at McMaster who worked on 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:26.280 the conversational skills of this robot. Karen Veal birth Fish, 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.520 who was another person who worked on Hitchbot's language skills. 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:34.240 Dominic kal Kinn, whose undergraduate student at McMaster whose job 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.200 was to monitor Hitchbot's status and make sure the robot 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.520 was okay. So again, the robot was fitted with GPS 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.280 and three G capability to essentially report back home saying 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.960 here's where I'm at, be given time in every twenty minutes, 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:49.440 he's getting a photograph sent from this robot to him 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:52.720 to kind of update status where he is right now. Yeah, 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.160 and then uh, there was the big brother robot to Hitchbot, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:01.719 Culture bought k U L t U R. Yeah. This 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:05.240 was this was a robot that preceded hitchpot. This was 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:10.719 a different human robot interaction experiment. Culture bots job was 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:16.640