Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: of the podcast that looks at the future and says,
Speaker 1: who let the dogs out? I'm Jonathan Strickland. I do
Speaker 1: hate you for that. I'm Lauren foc Obama, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormack. I warned you guys before we started recording.
Speaker 1: But anyway, today you wanted to talk about robo pets, right, yeah, okay, So, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm a pet person. I've got I've got a dog.
Speaker 1: Um do you either of you have pets. I've got
Speaker 1: a dog as well. I love pets, but my wife
Speaker 1: and I don't currently have one. Are my My parents
Speaker 1: have pets and I love to go visit them. And
Speaker 1: I think we're we keep we have dog envy, so
Speaker 1: we constantly think about like, should we get a dog?
Speaker 1: Should we get a dog? It's probably gonna happen soon, gotcha.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, I mean, you know, having a pet,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of people on some level take for granted. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are always those moments that you have with your
Speaker 1: pet where you're just like I never want this moment
Speaker 1: to ever end because it's awesome. I you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's a dog or a cat or you know, a
Speaker 1: Boa constrictor. People have different types of pets, and they
Speaker 1: all have them for for different reasons. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about the process of perhaps
Speaker 1: moving from actual living animal pets to robotic pets, and
Speaker 1: also talk a little bit about why, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the effects we get when we happen to have
Speaker 1: a pet and bond with that pet. Yeah. I wanted
Speaker 1: to start by emphasizing the fact that when we're talking
Speaker 1: about replacing animals with robots, I don't think that's uh,
Speaker 1: just a nothing question. I mean, the love we have
Speaker 1: for animals is totally real, like you know, in a
Speaker 1: sort of biologically verifiable way, it's real. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I read about was how, uh this
Speaker 1: chemical called oxytocin. It's a neuroactive chemical in the body,
Speaker 1: and it is very significant in like say, bonding and intimacy.
Speaker 1: So you get it with with touching people that you
Speaker 1: feel closely about when it's present in mothers and infants,
Speaker 1: steering bonding. But apparently also oxytocin has been linked to
Speaker 1: bonding between humans and their pets, and oxytocin has got
Speaker 1: a lot of actual, pretty powerful effects on people, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it's when we say bonding that seems pretty
Speaker 1: uh you know, conceptual, like you're not you know what
Speaker 1: does that actually mean? But oxytocin can actually have uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a measurable effect on the body. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: like lots of these chemicals that happen in the brain
Speaker 1: and the nervous system. We we don't know all of
Speaker 1: the effects, but we we have it linked to a
Speaker 1: bunch of effects like lowering anxiety, helping us feel happy
Speaker 1: and trusting um, and also just putting the body into
Speaker 1: a state of readiness to heal, which sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit woo woo, I understand, but but that's scientific woo woo. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: so as opposed to oxytocin, it makes you more likely
Speaker 1: to be able to bend spoons with your mind, which
Speaker 1: is just total woo woo. But yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's clear that this is this is actually biologically powerful stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're there beyond all the cat videos that
Speaker 1: are out there on YouTube, which is just I mean,
Speaker 1: that's proof alone that we have a fascination for animals.
Speaker 1: It has an actual biological effect. Yeah, and we know
Speaker 1: this from experience too. I mean, there's no logical reason
Speaker 1: that you should like risk your life to save an animal,
Speaker 1: but people do this. Oh. Of course, animals have been
Speaker 1: used for therapeutic purposes too, since way before science ever
Speaker 1: started looking into all this chemistry stuff, since like the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds of Florence Nightingale used animals with her patients.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, they started doing
Speaker 1: research to start verifying some of this stuff, and that
Speaker 1: was when we got those studies that like found that
Speaker 1: heart attack survivors who had pets lived longer than those
Speaker 1: who did and and that petting an animal can lower
Speaker 1: your blood pressure. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there are
Speaker 1: some benefits of having pets. Not everyone can have at
Speaker 1: least what we consider a traditional pet, though, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, I know people who have allergies that are
Speaker 1: so severe that they can't be anywhere near an animal
Speaker 1: for more than a couple of minutes before they start
Speaker 1: having symptoms of their allergies. They start having eyes or watering,
Speaker 1: they start being having difficulty breathing sometimes, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if it's an allergy to like a dog or a cat.
Speaker 1: They might even develop, you know, physical rashes. So it's
Speaker 1: as sure. It's estimated that about that almost ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population could be allergic to cats and dogs,
Speaker 1: and it can get really serious, really fast if you,
Speaker 1: for example, have a pre existing condition like asthma, which
Speaker 1: can set off those symptoms a lot worse and trigger
Speaker 1: an attack. And they're not always you know, we love
Speaker 1: our animals, and most of us feel like they're totally
Speaker 1: worth the cost that's involved in keeping an animal, but
Speaker 1: that cost can be pretty high. They can financially cost Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our compatriots over at pet finder dot com estimate that
Speaker 1: the cost of owning a cat per year can be
Speaker 1: anywhere from three hundred to dollars, and and that a
Speaker 1: dog ownership for a year can cost anywhere between five
Speaker 1: hundred and a thousand. I'm sorry, I totally incorrect one right.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, like, I had a dog
Speaker 1: named thisby who I sadly lost just last year, and uh,
Speaker 1: the last couple of years of her life. They were
Speaker 1: very expensive because she was generally pretty healthy, but she
Speaker 1: had a couple of acute health problems. That required quite
Speaker 1: a bit of money to help resolve. And you know,
Speaker 1: once we were sure that she was in a good
Speaker 1: place again and everything was fine. But eventually, of course
Speaker 1: her health declined to a point where we had to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to her and that was very very hard
Speaker 1: emotionally on me. Um. But yeah, obviously it was also
Speaker 1: was also very expensive. So there are lots of wonderful
Speaker 1: benefits to owning a pet, but having a real animal
Speaker 1: pet also comes with these other sides. You know, these
Speaker 1: other considerations you have to take into account. Otherwise you're
Speaker 1: being really naive if you don't don't think that there
Speaker 1: could be another side to it, right, Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: brings up the question, Well, people are talking about artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence robots. I mean, people have thought about making fake
Speaker 1: humans for a long time. I've known a few why
Speaker 1: not make artificial animals? Well, especially when we've already touched
Speaker 1: on something else that we humans already do, which is
Speaker 1: that we develop an emotional attachment to things that are
Speaker 1: not actually alive. I mean, when we have our discussion
Speaker 1: about people who have named their room bas uh. And
Speaker 1: granted in this case, you probably wouldn't necessarily have the
Speaker 1: same sort of emotional attachment to a roomba as you
Speaker 1: would to a dog or a cat, depending upon the person. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people really hate dogs and cats, and some people really
Speaker 1: love rumbas. I mean, you know, people name their room Baz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know so. But the fact that we already know
Speaker 1: that there are people who develop emotional attachments to things
Speaker 1: that are not actually organically alive suggest that perhaps a
Speaker 1: robotic pet is a perfectly cromulent outcome, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in fact, it's not something that's never been tried before.
Speaker 1: There's actually quite a few. In fact, I didn't think
Speaker 1: to put it in our notes, and it may even
Speaker 1: be in our notes further down, and I missed it.
Speaker 1: But I was also thinking that beyond the actual robots
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about, there's also the digital
Speaker 1: pets that Tama and stuff like that. Yeah, those got
Speaker 1: really popular, and I think it was like around the
Speaker 1: nineties when they started getting really popular, and some elements
Speaker 1: of that have crept into video games, computer games, that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. And while those aren't necessarily physical representations
Speaker 1: of pets like the other ones were going to talk about,
Speaker 1: and not not moving walking representations of pets anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's still something that people could have kind of
Speaker 1: an emotional attachment to. So if you want to hear
Speaker 1: a lot more about digital pets, Jonathan and I did
Speaker 1: an episode of Tech Stuff all about them at some
Speaker 1: point last year. Yeah, it would have been early last year,
Speaker 1: so somewhere early in two thousand and thirty. And see
Speaker 1: if we can remember to link that on social Yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the actual robots that
Speaker 1: various companies have come out with that are, you know,
Speaker 1: either supposed to completely mimic an animal or at least
Speaker 1: be representational of an animal. Okay, so in the late
Speaker 1: nineties through the two thousands, there were a bunch of these, um,
Speaker 1: and I'd say probably the biggest one, the one you're
Speaker 1: most likely to have heard of, is the Sony a Bow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing these. So this was a little like
Speaker 1: robotic puppy dog type thing, and um there were there
Speaker 1: were different versions of it that each looked different, So
Speaker 1: I had like differently shaped heads sort of and and
Speaker 1: different designs coming out over time because it existed in
Speaker 1: many incarnations over the years. Sure, but but if you
Speaker 1: if you think about I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: the phrase robot dog. This is about what you would
Speaker 1: expect phrase, unless, of course, you grew up watching Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: in which case K nine might be the and all
Speaker 1: be all of robot dogs. This one was slightly more streamlined.
Speaker 1: It was the iMac of of the canine and it
Speaker 1: had legs. Yeah. Yeah, well so it debuted in nine
Speaker 1: and it was really impressive in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I've got to say, especially for back being back in
Speaker 1: and what it developed over the early two thousand's. So
Speaker 1: it could walk around in a fairly stable way. It
Speaker 1: could see and hear um, and with hearing it could
Speaker 1: respond to the owner's verbal commands. Sure um. It could
Speaker 1: also take pictures. There was actually a uh, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a funny sce net article we found where they
Speaker 1: mentioned that there were fan communities of these pictures taken
Speaker 1: by the Sony dogs. But all the pictures happened to
Speaker 1: be of people's feet or table legs, table legs, and
Speaker 1: people's ankle because because because the eye, it's not a
Speaker 1: very or a bow, it's not a very large device.
Speaker 1: It's actually, you know, it's a tiny little puppy dog
Speaker 1: size things. So any picture taking from its perspective is
Speaker 1: about what you'd expect, you know, around around that eye
Speaker 1: level for a puppy dog. Of course, that kind of
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if there's an actual animal that size
Speaker 1: when it thinks about like the image of its owner,
Speaker 1: does it think about the face or does it think
Speaker 1: about what's usually at eye level for it? Well, I
Speaker 1: would imagine that depends on whether or not you allow
Speaker 1: the animal to get up on the furniture. In my case,
Speaker 1: my dog definitely knows my face because he and I
Speaker 1: are level pretty much all the time. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: the abo or ibo however we pronounced it, it's a
Speaker 1: I b O, but it's uh. They made what like
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty thousand of these things. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: importation from to two thousand six when they closed it off.
Speaker 1: And in retrospect, I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: kind of looked at it as a tech failure, not
Speaker 1: because it was necessarily a bad product, but because it
Speaker 1: was too expensive, prohibitively expensive. It was. There were different
Speaker 1: prices for the models throughout the years, but it ranged
Speaker 1: from about a thousand dollars to two thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: and and to have someone like the the issue here
Speaker 1: is to market a robotic companion that comes across like
Speaker 1: a pet where you might be willing to spend a
Speaker 1: good deal of money, keeping in mind that, yes, this
Speaker 1: is an upfront cost for this particular kind of pet,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a biological pet, where the costs go
Speaker 1: throughout the animal's lifetime. This one, it's all up front.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to get people to think of it
Speaker 1: as a pet as opposed to a toy, And to
Speaker 1: convince people to spend a thousand to two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on a toy is a lot harder than to say, no,
Speaker 1: this is a pet. Yeah. Another thing about a bow uh,
Speaker 1: is that despite his cool ability to walk around and
Speaker 1: and and respond to commands and have some degree of intelligence,
Speaker 1: that that's all kind of cute and fun. This is
Speaker 1: obviously a robot, Like, you're not trying to hide the
Speaker 1: fact that it's a robot. It's got a smooth plastic
Speaker 1: outer exterior. Uh. You can hear it moving around, you know.
Speaker 1: Eventually it would start saying kill all humans, you know,
Speaker 1: the way all robots do. Eventually. They weren't training. They
Speaker 1: clearly they weren't trying to pass for life like this
Speaker 1: was its own kind of thing. This is a robot
Speaker 1: very kitchily specifically, I mean, like the product design very
Speaker 1: much reminds me of of robotic illustrations from the nineteen fifties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got a very Jetson's kind of look to it, definitely. So,
Speaker 1: but we have another one here that we were going
Speaker 1: to talk about, an actual therapeutic robotic animal. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I've pet one of these really Yeah at
Speaker 1: C Yes, I take it. I believe it was the yes, yes,
Speaker 1: uh pero p a r oh, Yeah, this was that's
Speaker 1: that one that looks like a harp seal. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a cute little harp seal and it makes a little
Speaker 1: cooing noises and you can pet it and it moves,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there was a there was a booth that
Speaker 1: had one. It was either at C E S or
Speaker 1: it was at E three I remember, I remember was
Speaker 1: one of the two. E three would have been the
Speaker 1: more unusual place to see it. But um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and this is a robotic harp seal essentially that's designed
Speaker 1: to be kind of a cuddly um sort of animal
Speaker 1: substitute for people who need a sort of a therapy
Speaker 1: animal something to have that sort of therapeutic effect that
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. Yeah, so this is a
Speaker 1: very different kind of approach than than Abo. So whereas
Speaker 1: Abo is a fun toy that will walk around the
Speaker 1: room and do cute things, Pero is a sort of
Speaker 1: lap toy. It doesn't move around. It does move siggles,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't it doesn't look amoute. Yeah. The moving
Speaker 1: is designed to respond to petting and to show facial
Speaker 1: animation to give it personality. It's covered in fur, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing that they're going for here.
Speaker 1: Is this more lifelike kind of approach to the animal
Speaker 1: feeling tactile at any rate. Yeah, it's covered in soft
Speaker 1: for actually soft antibacterial, for which point it responds to
Speaker 1: different kind of touching it. It moves its eyes, it
Speaker 1: blinks in a really adorable way. Uh, and it lets
Speaker 1: you know when it needs something like power slash food,
Speaker 1: which is I guess the same thing for it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's charged by a little pacifier that goes in the mouth,
Speaker 1: which is creepy. Yeah, this is kind of cute, kind
Speaker 1: of creepy at the same time. And it's the crying
Speaker 1: if you ignore it that really starts to get creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's one of the things is that it's
Speaker 1: baby sized, like this sort of goes right in your arms,
Speaker 1: and it's believed to sort of reduce anxiety and encourage engagement,
Speaker 1: especially from people suffering from dementia and right, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was the the display I saw. They were specifically talking
Speaker 1: about using it in places like elder care facilities and
Speaker 1: uh and you know that sort of therapy, and it
Speaker 1: was undeniably cute. It's a very cute kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I saw it, I was really
Speaker 1: impressed with uh, just as you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: it's functions were pretty basic. It did them really well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've also definitely used them. And what it's it was
Speaker 1: developed in Japan by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Speaker 1: Science and Technology, and so it's also been used a
Speaker 1: bunch over there during the tsunami relief, earthquake relief stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah. So where does the cost come in
Speaker 1: on this one, though, because that's a big question. It's
Speaker 1: pretty expensive. We're talking we're talking probably around five thousand
Speaker 1: or six thousand dollars. I've seen years ago it was
Speaker 1: cited as six thousand The most recent figure I've seen
Speaker 1: as five thousand dollars. So this isn't a household item. No,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't intended to be really no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're not really selling this to get I think it's
Speaker 1: mostly for or care facilities, Like the facility has one
Speaker 1: and it uses it sort of as an in house
Speaker 1: therapy animal. Well, however, the next one we have on
Speaker 1: our list is actually a one that was marketed to consumers, right,
Speaker 1: this was a consumer pet robot. Yeah. This next one.
Speaker 1: Uh Yet again, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it,
Speaker 1: would you say? P l e O? Uh? So? Pleo
Speaker 1: is a robotic dinosaur modeled after the genus Camarasaurus, which
Speaker 1: was a four footed sauropod. It's not a camaro Saurus,
Speaker 1: which is a boss kind of car, just making sure
Speaker 1: fairly boss moderately boss moderately boss, Okay. So, whereas something
Speaker 1: like a bow is obviously a robot with like the
Speaker 1: smooth artificial exterior and the robotic movements and and that's
Speaker 1: sort of like part of the charm of a bow,
Speaker 1: Pleo is designed to have more lifelike movements, like it's
Speaker 1: really trying to convey vince you. I think that this
Speaker 1: is a real living creature, and it's it's got a
Speaker 1: soft skin like a like a plastic sized, I think
Speaker 1: silicone based kind of thing that that was that was painted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's made to look like in a patasaurus or
Speaker 1: as you were saying that the Kamarasaurus um. It's actually
Speaker 1: uh able to have lots of little facial expressions and
Speaker 1: uh and and again it seems to have a personality
Speaker 1: on its own. Yeah. That's one thing they sell this
Speaker 1: with is the idea that it has emotional intelligence, that
Speaker 1: this animal has a personality and and real emotions, and
Speaker 1: that it looks like it's about to read lines from
Speaker 1: the land before time. It really does. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that. But yeah, so it
Speaker 1: responds to petting and touching, and it makes vocalizations and
Speaker 1: changes its body movements and facial expressions with response to
Speaker 1: how you manipulate it with your hands. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: got a pretty robust sensory apparatus, yes, it does to
Speaker 1: tell what's going on. Now. The reason why I'm giggling
Speaker 1: is because here at how stuff works, which is where
Speaker 1: we are right now, is that how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Our site director Tracy Wilson wrote an article about Pleo
Speaker 1: and was actually going to take one apart because we
Speaker 1: used to do that at How Stuff Works. We would
Speaker 1: we would do these full galleries where we would get
Speaker 1: gadgets and we would break them down and show all
Speaker 1: the parts that were inside them. It just kept screaming, no,
Speaker 1: I'm making that part up. But as I recall, I
Speaker 1: think we ultimately decided not to do that with Pleo
Speaker 1: because I believe they asked us very nicely, uh to
Speaker 1: you know, not do that. There is a photograph from
Speaker 1: the company you go you ugo B I have no
Speaker 1: idea how to say that either creators of the original
Speaker 1: Pleo right right and there there's a photograph attached to
Speaker 1: the that How Stuff Works article of its inner skeleton,
Speaker 1: and I had and it kind of upset me. I like,
Speaker 1: scrolling through the article, I was surprisingly emotion only upset.
Speaker 1: And again that's a great example of how something that
Speaker 1: we know, I mean, you rationally know this thing is
Speaker 1: not actually live, it's not organic in any way. It
Speaker 1: didn't trick me, but you can still I mean, if
Speaker 1: I were to watch somebody uh cause damage to one
Speaker 1: of these especially when it was on. I would definitely
Speaker 1: have an emotional response to it. I would feel badly
Speaker 1: for this thing that could not itself feel Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you're skeptical about the ability to bond with a
Speaker 1: robotic pet, that's very convincing. Think about this. Would you
Speaker 1: feel okay kicking it like just any rock or something
Speaker 1: like that. If you wouldn't, and I think if you're
Speaker 1: a person of normal emotional character you wouldn't feel okay
Speaker 1: about just kicking it, then you might also have some
Speaker 1: potential to bond with something like this. Yeah. But so
Speaker 1: a little more about Clio. So it was originally put
Speaker 1: out by Yugobi. I think that's how you pronounce it,
Speaker 1: which I shared a co creator with the old Furbie
Speaker 1: dolls Um Caleb Chung. Yes. Yeah. So the original model
Speaker 1: of Pleo went goodbye in two thousand nine, but then
Speaker 1: the model was resurrected later as Pleo r B Pleo
Speaker 1: reborn Um And so that was priced at four hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty nine dollars in two thousand and eleven. That
Speaker 1: is still officially the list price from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: but I've found them as cheap as three D fifty
Speaker 1: five on Amazon, so uh much less expensive than the
Speaker 1: old Sony a Bow or EBow dogs and much much
Speaker 1: less expensive. So we're starting to see it in a
Speaker 1: range where at least some people would have it more
Speaker 1: within their their buying power. But again, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people still view these as as toys primarily,
Speaker 1: not as something that they would uh, not as something
Speaker 1: that they could develop an emotional attachment to that would
Speaker 1: seem quote unquote normal, right, Not like there's anything necessarily
Speaker 1: abnormal about it, because as we've established, all of us
Speaker 1: can develop emotional attachments to things that are not organically alive.
Speaker 1: But there's kind of a social and cultural concept that
Speaker 1: such an emotional attachment is a little odd. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: changing slowly, but I know that if I were to
Speaker 1: have bought a pleo as a kid and treated it
Speaker 1: like a pet, even if that made me happy, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that most of my friends would have viewed me
Speaker 1: as even more strange than they already did just saying something,
Speaker 1: and possibly that your parents would have gone like, huh No,
Speaker 1: I think my parents would have been totally on board.
Speaker 1: In fact, I feel fairly confident about that. So moving on, though,
Speaker 1: there was another robotic dog, Right, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: cite one more example, because actually there have been a bunch. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been. Yeah, there's actually quite a few examples. I
Speaker 1: mean I remember going through toy stores and seeing various
Speaker 1: models of different types of robotic pets the head different
Speaker 1: levels of sophistications. Some of them were no more than
Speaker 1: like an r C controlled essentially like an RC controlled vehicle,
Speaker 1: but in an animal kind of form factor. Others had
Speaker 1: these more advanced features where they were able to respond
Speaker 1: to things like vocal commands or being able to sense
Speaker 1: when something was touching it. Yeah, So we just focused
Speaker 1: on some of the ones that I thought were the
Speaker 1: most interesting, but there are a bunch of others. And
Speaker 1: one of the examples I wanted to give of one
Speaker 1: that's still being made because like a bow was discontinued,
Speaker 1: right of course, um one today is Zoomer. So that's
Speaker 1: a little robotic puppy. Uh yeah, so that's an actually
Speaker 1: affordable I mean, I would argue that if you're going
Speaker 1: to drop cash on a robot pet, that is a
Speaker 1: reachable price point for the kind of person who. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I did read a review of
Speaker 1: it from Mash double, so it doesn't walk. It has
Speaker 1: rollers for feet, and so that's which does considerably sort
Speaker 1: of undercutting the life like aspect of it definitely, but
Speaker 1: it also means that it can keep up with you
Speaker 1: a little bit better. I mean, and anything that has
Speaker 1: that four legged uh look look, motion is going to
Speaker 1: be significantly slow at this current stage in Rebot unless
Speaker 1: you are so we'll talk about that in a little
Speaker 1: Good Boy. I can't wait. Okay. The other thing the
Speaker 1: review I read noted I don't know if I said
Speaker 1: it was from Mashable, but they noted that it's not
Speaker 1: very responsive to the verbal commands during its training mode,
Speaker 1: and that so it's just like a dog. You have
Speaker 1: to press a button to make it listen to you,
Speaker 1: like on its head. You have to pat its head
Speaker 1: and then it will listen. Okay, it seems incredibly similar
Speaker 1: to my own experience. But all right, I take it.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Then again, one thing I
Speaker 1: do want to note versus a top price of around
Speaker 1: two thousand for a but that's five of the price. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're kind of what you pay for. But but
Speaker 1: also I don't know, like like that that review from
Speaker 1: mesh Bowl was talking about how this is, although clearly
Speaker 1: not a dog is perhaps a decent replacement as such,
Speaker 1: for for for a kid who's either allergic or maybe
Speaker 1: whose parents can't afford to keep up with a dog,
Speaker 1: or maybe they live and say an apartment where there's
Speaker 1: a no pets policy, or or wanting to to test
Speaker 1: out and see if a child who's been begging them
Speaker 1: for a dog is actually going to pay any attention
Speaker 1: to it at all whatsoever? Right, Okay, so I want
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the things that we would
Speaker 1: have to accomplish in order to make a really really
Speaker 1: amazing robot pet. Okay, so where we've come so far
Speaker 1: is impressive, but we're not there yet. We don't have
Speaker 1: these robots that are that are really convincingly like real animals. Right.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about locomotion. Let's let's go into that. Okay, sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a lot of the ones we've discussed so far
Speaker 1: either would be kind of wobbly, you know, if they're
Speaker 1: actually walking on four legs, they don't they don't tend
Speaker 1: to have very smooth, fluid, organic kind of movement, or
Speaker 1: they're moving around on wheels, So I mean that's very
Speaker 1: different from what you would see in the animal world.
Speaker 1: Maybe you'd have to get a really long haired artificial
Speaker 1: dog that where you wouldn't be able to see the
Speaker 1: legs anyway, and so it could just wheel along and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't notice, so like canine, but with fur instead
Speaker 1: of so wait, so you're you're suggesting that a device
Speaker 1: with wheels also has long hair, and you don't see
Speaker 1: any potential, then you are clearly the engineer in the room.
Speaker 1: Robotic dog with mange and sparks flying out and smoke
Speaker 1: coming up. That's all I see from this. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So no, imagine that you want a robotic dog, but
Speaker 1: you want like like a big dog that you can
Speaker 1: run around with and wrestle with the play frisbee in
Speaker 1: the park. You know that when big dog? Are you
Speaker 1: thinking Buston Dynamics big Dog, Well, yes that I am
Speaker 1: think that among other robots from Boston Dynamics, And Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics is their robotics company that they partner with DARPA,
Speaker 1: and they've been designing a lot of really cool and
Speaker 1: weird and cute and strange looking things for the military set. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they fall deeply into that uncanny valley kind of territory
Speaker 1: for me because because their movements are so realistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are, they are mimicking biological movements. Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of these things were like say, they were
Speaker 1: created to carry packs in the field or something like this.
Speaker 1: But what we're talking about are quadrpeedal robots. They're they're
Speaker 1: four legged robots that run over terrain. They can run
Speaker 1: around wherever. We can talk about a few of them.
Speaker 1: One of them is the Big Dog. The Big Dog
Speaker 1: is a big, four legged, quadrupedal robot that It's pretty
Speaker 1: cool because you can see it getting there in terms
Speaker 1: of balance, stability, the sort of robust motion that a
Speaker 1: live animal has because of their motor cortex. Now, is
Speaker 1: that the one where there's the video of the guy
Speaker 1: pushing the robot with his foot? Yes, this is a
Speaker 1: four legged, uh, four legged robot and this guy kicks it.
Speaker 1: He just kicks it, and it like stumbles, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't fall over. So the question I have for you
Speaker 1: guys is did you feel bad for the robot? I did,
Speaker 1: And then I think in the same video it immediately
Speaker 1: proceeds because they're on an icy surface and the robots
Speaker 1: starts slipping on the ice, and I had the same
Speaker 1: emotional gut reaction that I do when my dog slips
Speaker 1: on the ice, and I'm like, that's so cute and
Speaker 1: I need to help you. Yeah. Yeah, And I really
Speaker 1: did feel that too. I saw it slipping on the ice.
Speaker 1: First it was hilarious, and then I felt so much pity. Right,
Speaker 1: and then it's interesting again because once again, on a
Speaker 1: rational level, we know that this is a machine, but
Speaker 1: on an emotional level, we do have this connection. And
Speaker 1: I mean I was mad at the guy for kicking
Speaker 1: the robot. It was really a demonstration to show how
Speaker 1: if it was suddenly thrown off balance, how I could
Speaker 1: catch itself and remain up right. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a It was a practical demonstration of the robots capabilities.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I'm like, you're a mean man,
Speaker 1: Mr Kicker. Yeah. I felt the same way. Some other
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics robots you should check out. Go to YouTube.
Speaker 1: Look up videos of Big Dog. Look up Cheetah. That's
Speaker 1: a much smaller one that can run really fast. According
Speaker 1: to their YouTube video description, it it achieved a speed
Speaker 1: of twenty eight point three miles per hour, which is
Speaker 1: quote a bit faster than Usain Boltt. Yeah. Um, that
Speaker 1: also would be very unsettling to see a robot moving
Speaker 1: that quickly, especially you and and particularly since for most
Speaker 1: of us are experience with robots tends to be this
Speaker 1: lower end consumer level, right, So what we're used to
Speaker 1: is things that kind of wiggle a little bit as
Speaker 1: they're trying to walk forward. They are they always look
Speaker 1: like they're right on the verge to tipping over something
Speaker 1: very nearly stationary, right, So when you see something like
Speaker 1: this they can move at twenty emails probably like that
Speaker 1: is just not right. Beyond the big dog, there's another one,
Speaker 1: the wild cat. Yeah, I saw this one too. That
Speaker 1: one was really interesting because it could move very quickly
Speaker 1: and it had two different basic styles of running. It
Speaker 1: had kind of a galloping run and it had a
Speaker 1: bounding run. So the galloping one will look more like
Speaker 1: what you would see like the way a horse would
Speaker 1: would be at a full gallop, and the bounding one
Speaker 1: reminded me of a dog like in full run, chasing
Speaker 1: after like a frisbee or something. Yeah, So with advances
Speaker 1: like these, I can really see how it could be
Speaker 1: possible to create a big, fun robotic dog to run
Speaker 1: around with you in the park, to go on hikes
Speaker 1: and nature trails with you, to wrestle, or you know,
Speaker 1: do whatever kind of athletic thing you want to do
Speaker 1: with the dog. But there are some big drawbacks you'll
Speaker 1: immediately recognize if you watch these videos. Number one, these
Speaker 1: things are large and bulky and loud. Number two, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say they sound like mechanized death running toward you.
Speaker 1: Take all take all the sound, all the sound work
Speaker 1: used in UH in the Michael Bay Transformers movies, and
Speaker 1: apply that to your pet. Uh Number three, they're not
Speaker 1: very cuddly. And that's what I want to move into.
Speaker 1: The next thing is that I think we would have
Speaker 1: to work on to get really good robotic pets, would
Speaker 1: be designing them for texture actually and for cuddliness. Well,
Speaker 1: and this is this is like for this is something
Speaker 1: that Pero already probably does pretty well. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something that's incredibly challenging because if you want both of
Speaker 1: these things, then you're really limiting yourself to what kind
Speaker 1: of materials and what kind of power you can use,
Speaker 1: because all of that's going to add weight to your pet. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so if you think about something like the big dog robot.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that would be way too bulky, way
Speaker 1: too large, and way too robotic to pass as any
Speaker 1: sort of pet that's supposed to mimic a biological creature
Speaker 1: convincing lye um. But if you think about that, then
Speaker 1: that would essentially be your skeleton and musculature for whatever
Speaker 1: animal you end up with, and then you would have
Speaker 1: to pad that out with other material to make it
Speaker 1: more cuddly and soft, so it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: a hard edged robot that has fur on top of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the advances that I think is coming sometime
Speaker 1: in the future is going to be soft robotics. And
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about this Joe and I
Speaker 1: and our episode about robot childcare, but um, which actually
Speaker 1: will be airing after this is okay, so look forward
Speaker 1: to that in the future. Then, basically, robot research up
Speaker 1: until now has really been focused on using hard materials
Speaker 1: because there's so much more predictable from a mathematical standpoint
Speaker 1: and and more durable and therefore easier to implement. And
Speaker 1: so we don't even have software to to help researchers
Speaker 1: account for how soft materials are going to behave, right,
Speaker 1: I want to introduce a couple other concerns when it
Speaker 1: comes to this texture thing. One of them is warmth.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you all have considered this, but
Speaker 1: it might be kind of disconcerting if you're to hold
Speaker 1: or pet your room and it's not warm, yeah, or
Speaker 1: it's or it's just very warm wherever the battery exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's not distributed in a way that feels organic.
Speaker 1: I think the the uniformity of human body or animal
Speaker 1: body warmth is one of the key things that you
Speaker 1: used to detect life by touch. Sure, I feel like
Speaker 1: that could be a relatively easy thing to solve compared
Speaker 1: to some of these other problems. But but absolutely that's
Speaker 1: something I think you would have to come up with
Speaker 1: a plan where the heat generated by whatever the power
Speaker 1: source was was distributed across this because you clearly wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to add heating elements to a robot, because electronics
Speaker 1: and heat don't go so well together. No, but I
Speaker 1: could certainly imagine, say, if you've got a heat sink
Speaker 1: within the machine, you might have capillary actions distributing it.
Speaker 1: Might be a clever dual purpose us like like figure
Speaker 1: out figuring out how to distribute that any of our
Speaker 1: listeners are are taking notes and they're about to make
Speaker 1: a robotic animal based upon our suggestions, you can just
Speaker 1: include us in that pattern, just just throwing it out there.
Speaker 1: Another thing about the touch and the texture of the
Speaker 1: animal would be something that came up with the Pleio.
Speaker 1: So one of the problems with the original Pleio was
Speaker 1: that its skin would flake away after after lots of
Speaker 1: petting over time, prolonged touch and interaction with this animal
Speaker 1: would cause the paint to flake off. And this is
Speaker 1: a real problem. I mean, real animals, when you're petting them,
Speaker 1: you're like removing detached pieces of fur and dead skin cells,
Speaker 1: stuff that comes away naturally, and in fact, they can
Speaker 1: be pleasurable for the animal to for you to move
Speaker 1: that aways. Sure, yeah, with a non alive organism, it's
Speaker 1: not regenerating its own exterior just can be well. I mean,
Speaker 1: one solution to that is to create some sort of
Speaker 1: robotic pet where the uh, the skin is actually replaceable
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, like like you do that
Speaker 1: on you know. I can just imagine you go and
Speaker 1: you have to go buy a new skin for your
Speaker 1: robot pet, and then you can remove the old one
Speaker 1: and put in a new one. Now, granted, that does
Speaker 1: take away, obviously from the realism, but I don't think
Speaker 1: any of us want the experience of actually having to
Speaker 1: scalp our robot pet animal and then replace it with
Speaker 1: a new skin and suture it on. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sign up for that one. Although, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are certainly some maybe not not animals shaped creations,
Speaker 1: but some some dolls and toys there. There's some Asian
Speaker 1: fashion dolls that there's there's some Korean lines of Japanese lines,
Speaker 1: and I'm forgetting the name of the things exactly, but
Speaker 1: but they stand a foot or too tall and uh,
Speaker 1: and the people who purchase them will purchase different eyes
Speaker 1: for them in wigs and will retool the strings in
Speaker 1: the alls so that they can and and all of
Speaker 1: this creeps me out a little bit, but it's considered
Speaker 1: perfectly normal within the community to be like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just touching up my doll, and so I took all
Speaker 1: of his joints apart, and I'm tightening his strings today
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Yeah, there could of course just
Speaker 1: be improved durability. I mean, that's one thing that they
Speaker 1: did with the ple o r b asps to the PLEO.
Speaker 1: One of the main upgrades they talked about was that
Speaker 1: uh its skin was more durable and it was less
Speaker 1: likely to flake off. And as we work on materials
Speaker 1: science related things like that, I do think that that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff is absolutely forthcoming. Okay, but looking at
Speaker 1: the Boston dynamics things that we mentioned a minute ago,
Speaker 1: sound this is obviously a big thing because when you
Speaker 1: haven't an object this big running at you, it's going
Speaker 1: to be making a lot of noises. But even if
Speaker 1: we say, okay, I don't want a huge, gigantic dog
Speaker 1: that I can wrestle with. I just want a cute
Speaker 1: little puppy, Well, even a bow makes noise absolutely, and
Speaker 1: you get these these mechanical noises. You know that that
Speaker 1: the gears in the movement, right, it's certainly not organic
Speaker 1: in any way. I mean that's ultimately that might not
Speaker 1: be an issue in the long run, but at least
Speaker 1: initially I could see that being something that turns people
Speaker 1: away because it doesn't seem you know, natural or real
Speaker 1: or however whatever word you want to use to describe
Speaker 1: it when you compare it against an actual organic pet.
Speaker 1: Although I think that a lot of those kind of
Speaker 1: a lot of the sound problems are going to become
Speaker 1: resolved when we also resolve some of the power and
Speaker 1: engine related issues. Yeah yeah, so let's go straight to
Speaker 1: that power and charging. Now, obviously I think you don't
Speaker 1: in the end want a gasoline powered internal combustion dog.
Speaker 1: I can just imagine having to pull a rip chord
Speaker 1: in where to start. Yeah, so, how long is your
Speaker 1: robot pets battery life? Um and doesn't maintain a charge
Speaker 1: for like continuous activity or play. Now I can imagine
Speaker 1: this actually being a horrible thing. If you have, say
Speaker 1: a small child playing with his or her beloved robot
Speaker 1: pet and that pets battery runs out and it just
Speaker 1: collapses to death. That would obviously be traumatic for a kid.
Speaker 1: Well if you if you said it so that whatever
Speaker 1: power meter is in the animal robotic pet, so you
Speaker 1: know there these these devices have meters that read how
Speaker 1: much power is available in the battery. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you were to design the pet in such a way
Speaker 1: where it starts to give indications that battery power is
Speaker 1: running low and not just by some sort of flashing
Speaker 1: light or something, which is the way a lot of
Speaker 1: our electronics do today, but in ways that are mimicking
Speaker 1: animal behavior, where got sleepy puppies, get tired, puppies need
Speaker 1: to take a nap. So if if it had that
Speaker 1: kind of more natural kind of yeah, like that's how
Speaker 1: it demonstrate that needed to be recharged, and that would
Speaker 1: probably be less traumatic. I can certainly see how that
Speaker 1: would work very well. And I think one I think
Speaker 1: the e bow I believe would recharge itself, like it
Speaker 1: would go back to its charging, it would get back over.
Speaker 1: Although you know it's power capacity is certainly a problem
Speaker 1: in anything, like we've talked about a million times on
Speaker 1: this show with with small electronics, you're going to run
Speaker 1: into just sheer battery life issues. The Zoomer, I think
Speaker 1: only has a half hour of battery life per charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I think about just our c cars
Speaker 1: that I've had in the past, and how quickly like
Speaker 1: ten minutes. Yeah, you have you have these moments of
Speaker 1: joy and then you're you suddenly realize that you are done.
Speaker 1: That's it, You're done better. You have to have an
Speaker 1: enormous package of batteries that you're constantly swapping out. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a challenge, that's that's a challenge across
Speaker 1: all electronics though, and we'll probably do an episode, uh
Speaker 1: someday about the future of things like battery technology, because
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that a lot of people
Speaker 1: find very frustrating. Yeah. So one of the last things
Speaker 1: I want to talk about is both maybe the most
Speaker 1: important of all of these, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: ones I have the least to say about because I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell the people designing these. But
Speaker 1: it's pet artificial intelligence. Yeah. I mean, just because animals
Speaker 1: aren't as smart as humans, it doesn't mean that their
Speaker 1: intelligence is easy to mimic. Sure, And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that a feature and a lot of these pets,
Speaker 1: including the digital pets like the Tamagachi is is a
Speaker 1: learning process. Sure. Yeah. And by learning, I mean it's
Speaker 1: we're not talking real machine AI learning. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not right. It's almost like there are certain
Speaker 1: behaviors that are unlocked as you interact with the pet. Right,
Speaker 1: It's more like playing a video game. Yeah, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you've unlocked a power up of some sort. Yes, And
Speaker 1: that's really really tricky. I mean, that's just a hard problem, period.
Speaker 1: And it's right there with all other hard problems that
Speaker 1: are related to artificial intelligence. You know, we're not when
Speaker 1: we say AI a lot of people I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people, myself included. Then think about the science
Speaker 1: fiction or film version of AI, which is essentially a
Speaker 1: computer thinking like a person. But artificial intelligence is an
Speaker 1: enormous field that has lots of different areas of focus,
Speaker 1: including how do you create an artificial machine that mimics
Speaker 1: life in a very believable way. My gut feeling is
Speaker 1: that despite the fact that it's certainly not going to
Speaker 1: be easy, it will actually be easier than mimicking human intelligence.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, so, uh probably, I don't know, my
Speaker 1: dog is really quirky, but yeah, And I think that
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of the admittedly kind of dumb, unpredictability
Speaker 1: of animals that makes them so charming. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of the YouTube videos, for example, that I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: that are just my favorites are some are some animal
Speaker 1: doing something that you never would expect an animal to
Speaker 1: have done. Right, Either they've they've done something incredibly clever
Speaker 1: because they've managed to solve a problem, and that's something
Speaker 1: we don't typically think animals are capable of doing. But
Speaker 1: there are plenty of videos out there where you see
Speaker 1: the animal has totally figured out how to move that
Speaker 1: chair from that part of the kitchen to a totally
Speaker 1: different part of the kitchen in order to get up
Speaker 1: on the counter, in order to open up the toaster
Speaker 1: of it, in order to get to the chicken McNuggets
Speaker 1: that are inside. You know, if it involves getting to
Speaker 1: food that they're not allowed to have, they'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: So if you're able to create an intelligence that can
Speaker 1: do probably not getting at batteries whether they aren't supposed
Speaker 1: to get at, but some other kind of behavior that's unexpected,
Speaker 1: then I think that goes a long way to creating
Speaker 1: this sort of bond where that's a That's a very
Speaker 1: important element is the the fact that there needs to
Speaker 1: be some level of unpredictability, not a lot, but at
Speaker 1: least enough for that to have that kind of experience
Speaker 1: that you would have having a an alive pet, an
Speaker 1: organic pet. Absolutely, the Eyebow designers were thinking about that.
Speaker 1: They created a mechanism in which the robot would sometimes
Speaker 1: not respond to your commands because it just didn't feel
Speaker 1: like you know, so, which I thought was very cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's art. Uh. The other thing, of course is price.
Speaker 1: But we've been talking about that as we've been going along.
Speaker 1: So one of the encouraging things is as we've been
Speaker 1: tracking these through time, the price does seem to be
Speaker 1: coming down on things that are pretty good. But then again,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how much one of those Boston
Speaker 1: Dynamics robots costs. I'm sure tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: and hundreds of thousands, I mean, but but when you
Speaker 1: think about it, Uh, that's building something that didn't exist before, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, so it's one thing to talk about developing
Speaker 1: a new type of robot, because everything you're doing is
Speaker 1: from scratch. I mean, even if you're using parts that
Speaker 1: were made by other companies or that were used in
Speaker 1: other things, you're putting together in a brand new way,
Speaker 1: which is always going to be incredibly expensive. But once
Speaker 1: you've settled on that design and you start to create
Speaker 1: the manufacturing processes that allow you to make it in
Speaker 1: mass quantities, that cost starts to come down. So if
Speaker 1: if people are able to use elms that have already
Speaker 1: been created for other purposes and they can repurpose it
Speaker 1: for the with the intent of creating a robotic animal
Speaker 1: that could help bring the cost down to it all
Speaker 1: depends on how you actually go about the process of
Speaker 1: building the robot. Yeah, but so now I want to think,
Speaker 1: if you'all already about some of the actual benefits that
Speaker 1: we really could get from having robotic pets and animals,
Speaker 1: because I personally admit that I have a strong prejudice
Speaker 1: towards actual live animals, like I don't feel in my
Speaker 1: heart that I could love a robotic animal like I
Speaker 1: love a real live animal. But there are obviously a
Speaker 1: lot of ways that a robotic animal really could be
Speaker 1: a benefit. And one of the first things that came
Speaker 1: to my mind when I was writing the script for
Speaker 1: this video episode was the fact that I and a
Speaker 1: lot of people like me get anxiety when flying on airplanes.
Speaker 1: Just don't like it. You know, it's no good And
Speaker 1: it would be wonderful if I could have an animal
Speaker 1: with me in an airplane. Wouldn't that be so comforting?
Speaker 1: If you could have a cat in your lap or
Speaker 1: have a dog with you. But that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: There's no reason airliners should allow animals on. I mean,
Speaker 1: they could go crazy, And you know, there are very
Speaker 1: specific rules as to how many animals are allowed to
Speaker 1: board any flight at a given time. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: the sizing and all that kind of Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: to be you know if if they don't fit underneath
Speaker 1: the seat in front of you, then they have to
Speaker 1: be in the cargo hold. That kind of stuff. Having
Speaker 1: a robot animal, though, I mean there you could have
Speaker 1: predictable behavior. I mean you you could have it in
Speaker 1: such a way that there wouldn't really need to be
Speaker 1: any restriction. Well, not only that, but you could have
Speaker 1: a quote unquote a pet that you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about setting off some other passengers allergies. Right, so
Speaker 1: there's no pet dander there, there's nothing that Assuming that
Speaker 1: whatever materials you're using are not going to set anyone
Speaker 1: off anyway, then you know, like whatever the fur or
Speaker 1: skin of that animal is, as long as that's not
Speaker 1: going to set people off, like it's some sort of
Speaker 1: weird exotic material that the population immediately breaks out as
Speaker 1: soon as they come into contact, don't don't. Don't make
Speaker 1: the fur out of peanuts and we'll be so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that would mean that, you know, you
Speaker 1: you would have yet another objection removed because you would
Speaker 1: have uh it's something that could help calm you but
Speaker 1: wouldn't cause distress to other passengers. Right, And then of
Speaker 1: course you can think of all kinds of other places
Speaker 1: that animals can't always go, or not all animals could go.
Speaker 1: In all cases, that would probably be fine if you
Speaker 1: had robotic pets. Think restaurants, Think hospitals. I mean, like airplanes,
Speaker 1: they are these there's places where maybe sometimes animals can
Speaker 1: be there, but only under restricted conditions I just imagined.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly that is a really terrific concept, especially
Speaker 1: for for people who have found great benefit and therapy animals.
Speaker 1: But I was just briefly picturing a terrible dystopia in
Speaker 1: which all the people that I don't like who carry
Speaker 1: little dogs around with them, We'll just have carte blanche
Speaker 1: to to carry little yappie type robots around with them
Speaker 1: everywhere they go. Well, that's why you have to carry
Speaker 1: one of those remote controls around with you. That just
Speaker 1: turns things off. Okay, dystopia, dystopia, okay, Okay. Another thing
Speaker 1: I do want to think about is something about the
Speaker 1: interest of the animals themselves, because there are people who
Speaker 1: would love to have an animal companion when they can
Speaker 1: have it, but maybe they're very busy, um a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or and so I think it would be in those
Speaker 1: cases maybe unethical, like say you work long hours all
Speaker 1: the time, or you travel a whole lot to just
Speaker 1: leave or live animal that's having real experiences and emotions
Speaker 1: by itself all the time. Oh absolutely, I have worked
Speaker 1: from home two or three days a week and I
Speaker 1: still feel bad leaving my dog the other days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Same here. But so if you could have a robotic pet,
Speaker 1: you could still get some of that experience of having
Speaker 1: a companion, some of that you know, and it would
Speaker 1: help give you all those feelings of love and companionship
Speaker 1: that an animal would, but you wouldn't be leaving it
Speaker 1: on its own. You wouldn't be causing an actual living
Speaker 1: animal distress by leaving it all right. On a similar level, um,
Speaker 1: you know, maintenance of the pet. If if you don't
Speaker 1: have time to take care of it, to get it
Speaker 1: to vet visits, to to give it a bath, et cetera,
Speaker 1: to take it on walks and most you know, more
Speaker 1: dog cases than cat cases probably, but yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: that could also matter if you're a really busy person.
Speaker 1: But think also, like say, if you are elderly or
Speaker 1: have a disability that would prevent you from being able
Speaker 1: to provide that animal all the caret needs, right sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's benefits on two different aspects there, right, So
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's perfectly legitimate. These these last couple of examples,
Speaker 1: if I can, if I can be depressing statistics girl
Speaker 1: for just a second, could be really especially fab considering
Speaker 1: that the Humane Society of the United States estimates that
Speaker 1: some two point seven million adoptable cats and dogs are
Speaker 1: put to sleep every year to shelter over population. And
Speaker 1: you know, okay, this this means a few things. And
Speaker 1: and in a more practical example, you know, adopt a
Speaker 1: pet from a shelter if you're going to adopt one,
Speaker 1: while we do not have robotic pets yet, and as
Speaker 1: spa a newter that pet because it's a really good plan,
Speaker 1: but but more pertinent to our current conversation. You know,
Speaker 1: an increase in robotic pets, I think could mean a
Speaker 1: decrease in the number of unwanted animals over time, as
Speaker 1: fewer pets are abandoned or have accidental letter litters. And
Speaker 1: that could be just so good. Yeah exactly. Uh well,
Speaker 1: I mean, let me ask you guys a quick question,
Speaker 1: because I mean, there are other things we could talk about.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, you know, we could actually get into
Speaker 1: the utility of a robotic pet beyond companionship, like, for example,
Speaker 1: the big dog ones that are made for the military
Speaker 1: and made to carry a load. You could, in theory
Speaker 1: have these robotic pets that are actually very useful for
Speaker 1: things like if you want to go camping, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to have to carry a forty pound backpack
Speaker 1: on your back, you could actually have a robot being
Speaker 1: able to do that. And whereas I would feel bad
Speaker 1: strapping my actual dog down with her, doesn't your dog
Speaker 1: way like fourteen pounds or something. She's like a forty pounds,
Speaker 1: but she's arthritic. Mine only wighs twelve pounds. If I
Speaker 1: strapped a forty pound backpack to my dog, I would
Speaker 1: have a dog on his back with his little legs
Speaker 1: waving in the air. Here's another thing you might not
Speaker 1: have thought of, or maybe you did, because I think
Speaker 1: I wrote it in the script, which is I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think when I do your scripts. I just
Speaker 1: I just okay, no, imagine a dog with GPS in it.
Speaker 1: So you go out on a run with your dog,
Speaker 1: and you could be in an unfamiliar city, or you
Speaker 1: could go down a path you've never been before, and
Speaker 1: your dog with you would be able to navigate for you.
Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't get lost with this dog with you.
Speaker 1: You know it knows the city streets how to lead
Speaker 1: you back. Uh, it could even warn you, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's connected to your weather app and say, hey, it's
Speaker 1: about to start raining in thirty minutes. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: post to my dog, who is an anti navigational system.
Speaker 1: In fact, she she if if I followed her, we
Speaker 1: would never get home. My dog is nearly blind and
Speaker 1: almost completely deaf, so following my dog is a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible mistake. So we just end up in a corner somewhere,
Speaker 1: and we've we we've talked a few times here about
Speaker 1: about using therapy animals and and you know, robots have
Speaker 1: have totally been used for more than just emotional therapy.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of trials going on for for teacher
Speaker 1: robots to see whether groups like a like like kids
Speaker 1: with autism could possibly benefit from robot therapy. And the
Speaker 1: short answer so far is yes, absolutely they can. Um
Speaker 1: you know, kids have trouble with things like eye contact
Speaker 1: or coordinated movement or taking turns have totally opened up
Speaker 1: with these these patient synchronous therapy robots. Okay, now, I've
Speaker 1: got a question for for all three of us. And
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about this before I came in here,
Speaker 1: but the question is, let's say we're in the amazing
Speaker 1: future where you know, we've got our animal pets and
Speaker 1: we love them, but we also have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: own a robot pet that perfectly mimics some sort of animal.
Speaker 1: What sort of animal would you pick? Let's let's limit
Speaker 1: it to real animals. Okay, well we'll go to two choices.
Speaker 1: One that's a real animal, though it could be a
Speaker 1: real animal from any era in Earth's history. And the
Speaker 1: second is any kind of imaginative, fantastical animal. Ever, So, uh, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you go first. I I'm a little bit obsessed with
Speaker 1: otters right now, and I mean those how those things
Speaker 1: are just so cute and you would never want to
Speaker 1: own a real one, sure that would be terribly cruel
Speaker 1: to the to the otter there. But but but a
Speaker 1: robotic one, sure, yeah, if it's completely realistic. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and if I can afford a robot otter,
Speaker 1: I could clearly afford to have a swimming pool and
Speaker 1: we could just we could just float on our backs
Speaker 1: holding hands. That's that's great. Okay, do you have one
Speaker 1: for your Do you want to come back around for fantasy?
Speaker 1: All right, so Joe, it's your turn. Okay. So I
Speaker 1: would probably go with weasel, so along the line, it's
Speaker 1: not a lot of ferret, but a weasel interesting or
Speaker 1: something something that would normally attack you and bite you
Speaker 1: a whole lot. But this won't right right, well, theoretically wolverine,
Speaker 1: wolverine or skunk creatures that are often rabid in nature. Maybe, Well,
Speaker 1: for my real one, I'm gonna go with Dodo. I
Speaker 1: would like I would like a robotic Dodo. I think
Speaker 1: I think, you know, from all the pictures, I think
Speaker 1: Dodos look really kind of a little clumsy and a little,
Speaker 1: you know, just a little a little they look a
Speaker 1: little dorky. They look a little dorky, And I think,
Speaker 1: but to me, it has sort of an adorable, you know,
Speaker 1: aspect to that. It's not like, you know, something that
Speaker 1: I find off putting. I actually find it endearing. Birds
Speaker 1: are terrifying. So I'm not going to come over to
Speaker 1: your house when you have a robot Dodo. Well, I
Speaker 1: won't necessarily have it, you know, behave accurately, but still terrifying. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so fantasy, Lauren, you know Joe's already piped up. I guess.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go with David Bowie from Labyrinth. It
Speaker 1: will may be the most popular person in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I want to redo my miniature luck Dragon.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so from Never Ending Story. All right, that's
Speaker 1: your fantasy. Well, okay, so I should do a real
Speaker 1: Zies fantasy one and not just David Bowie from Labyrinth. Um,
Speaker 1: because I think about all the all the the Jim
Speaker 1: Henson creations he's made, and I mean those are like
Speaker 1: like kind I want a little skexy Okay, alright, or
Speaker 1: I got you that one, yeah, uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I just think about all the heck, I would love
Speaker 1: to have a completely you know, realistic sort of Muppet character,
Speaker 1: any of the Muppets right as that would be like
Speaker 1: that would be a gold mine if they can make those.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to have something that would have that
Speaker 1: kind of personality, Like I would love to have, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Fauzy the Bear, because he and I have a
Speaker 1: very similar sense of humor, and our jokes are pretty much,
Speaker 1: you know, same, the same level of awesome. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Lauren. Oh I'm I am not even sure anymore.
Speaker 1: That's too many opportunity, many choices, one of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: giant cracking. You know, I'll go, I'll go giant cracking
Speaker 1: while I've got a swimming pool. Uh why not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. It's furry squid. Yeah, it would certainly
Speaker 1: giant cracking. It would discourage people from getting in your
Speaker 1: pool when you haven't allowed them to. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a good auto protection system. It is your honor is
Speaker 1: perfectly safe due to the cracking security tool. Alright, so well,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's open up that question to all
Speaker 1: of our listeners out there. If you guys could have
Speaker 1: some s sort of robotic pet, whether it's realistic or imaginative,
Speaker 1: you should let us know. Hey, we have an email
Speaker 1: address we do FW thinking at Discovery dot com. You
Speaker 1: can actually write us and tell us what your choices,
Speaker 1: or if you prefer, you can let us know on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus. We have the handle
Speaker 1: fw Thinking at all three locations. Remember to go to
Speaker 1: f W thinking dot com to see the videos and
Speaker 1: listen to other podcasts and read the blogs. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to do a blog post with some of
Speaker 1: the videos of these of these robots that we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, so so go find and check that out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, make sure you've become part of this conversation.
Speaker 1: We're looking forward to hearing from you and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
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