Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks to the future and says, all right,
Speaker 1: this one goes out to our producer Noel. I woke up.
Speaker 1: I saw a Texas dawn light shining in your eyes.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm La, and I'm Joe McCormick. So
Speaker 1: you guys went on a trip, didn't you? Boy, how
Speaker 1: didn't go on the trip? Where did you go? We
Speaker 1: went to south By Southwest Interactive in beautiful Austin, Texas. Yes,
Speaker 1: I shared a Airbnb house with several other of the
Speaker 1: guys here at how Stuff Works, So Nolan I both
Speaker 1: know the joys of sleeping in a large living room together.
Speaker 1: It was it was being a little bit sarcastic here
Speaker 1: at the top, but but no, but it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was an amazing, wonderful trip. It was overwhelming most
Speaker 1: of the time. Now, a lot of our listeners may
Speaker 1: already understand, but just brief rundown, what is south By Southwest?
Speaker 1: South By Southwest? First of all, you have to know
Speaker 1: that south By Southwest itself is an enormous festival that
Speaker 1: takes over downtown Austin, Texas for a little bit more
Speaker 1: than a week, and it has three not just music, No,
Speaker 1: it's not just music. It has three primary elements. It's
Speaker 1: gotten music that's that's a big one. It's got film
Speaker 1: that's a big one. And it has Interactive, which is
Speaker 1: the youngest of the three elements to join this conference. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Interactive is really, when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: anything vaguely techy. Lots of Internet based companies, but over
Speaker 1: the years we've seen more and more companies that are
Speaker 1: tangential to Internet startups join in the fun and create
Speaker 1: amazing experiences. There are tracts of panels that you can
Speaker 1: go to to learn more about certain subjects, but there's
Speaker 1: also just a ton of other stuff going on. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you could walk around downtown Austin and never
Speaker 1: go to a panel ever, but hit all the installations,
Speaker 1: exhibits and parties that are They are kind of supplemental
Speaker 1: to the official track program. Yeah, a lot of the
Speaker 1: really big tech companies have a presence there. A lot
Speaker 1: of them are kind of kind of wooing everyone involved,
Speaker 1: you know, put putting their very best marketing face forward,
Speaker 1: and and there are so many people who are in
Speaker 1: the industry who are either on panels or just hanging
Speaker 1: out having amazing conversations about about digital culture and and
Speaker 1: just what it's like like, like what this new world
Speaker 1: that's Internet based is like around us. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of networking going on its south by Southwest, and
Speaker 1: I mean that literally people are are networking together and
Speaker 1: create sometimes creating brand new projects just through their conversations
Speaker 1: they're having there. So it's, uh, it's it's a party atmosphere,
Speaker 1: but there's also a lot of talk, real serious talk
Speaker 1: around innovation and being more effective. And uh, I got
Speaker 1: to go to three panels while I was there, so
Speaker 1: I want to to kind of talk about those panels
Speaker 1: because they tie in directly to themes we've discussed here
Speaker 1: on Forward Thinking quite a few times. Now. Please keep
Speaker 1: in mind the three panels I saw, they were all
Speaker 1: part of the same track of programming, which was the
Speaker 1: Intelligent Future track kind of kind of our sweet spot,
Speaker 1: ah yeah, which is just one of what maybe like
Speaker 1: a dozen tracks that were going on just an interactive
Speaker 1: and there were hundreds of panels available just in Intelligent
Speaker 1: may maybe maybe another dozen, we'll we'll say in dozens
Speaker 1: of panels available intelligent futures of the course of the
Speaker 1: five days of Interactive And that's an addition to hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of more panels going on throughout that week
Speaker 1: and throughout the film segmented throughout the music segments. So
Speaker 1: also there are unofficial events as well, like there are
Speaker 1: discussions that didn't require a badge for you to go
Speaker 1: and check out. So in other words, what what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is, I'm giving you all the caveats to suggest
Speaker 1: this is not the only thing that was talked about
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. This was the stuff I was personally
Speaker 1: able to go see. But that being said, the stuff
Speaker 1: I saw it was pretty amazing. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: start with the first panel I saw. This was Saturday
Speaker 1: morning in the morning, as I recall, looking forward to
Speaker 1: rush hour. No, I don't think they have a nine
Speaker 1: thirty on Saturdays. They do, I've witnessed it personally. I
Speaker 1: think downtown Austin was as surprised as you are by
Speaker 1: this information. Yeah, actually was a pretty full panel too.
Speaker 1: That was the other thing that surprised me because I
Speaker 1: had always heard that because of the party atmosphere of
Speaker 1: south By Southwest the morning panels were not very well attended,
Speaker 1: but that was not the case in this one. It's
Speaker 1: called looking forward to Rush Hour, not the movie Future
Speaker 1: of Transit, So UH. The panel I saw featured Dan
Speaker 1: Dorley and Chip Walters, both of whom work for Altuit Design,
Speaker 1: which is a company that does UH industrial and product design,
Speaker 1: and they are both designers, and so they kind of
Speaker 1: split the panel into two major UH subjects. Um Dan
Speaker 1: Dorley took the microphone first and talked about the future
Speaker 1: of car is and UH. One of the things they
Speaker 1: really focused on, no big surprise, happened to be autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: This is something we've obviously talked about several times here
Speaker 1: at Forward Thinking, but at south By Southwest autonomous cars
Speaker 1: are pretty much we're pretty much talked about as an
Speaker 1: inevitable future. Not will autonomous cars become a thing, but
Speaker 1: it was more like when are they going to be
Speaker 1: the thing? I think that's been our consensus as well.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree. Yeah, it's just one of those
Speaker 1: where you go there and everyone's talking about like it's
Speaker 1: already here, almost like we're to be fair, it looks
Speaker 1: like we're right on the cusp, right, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: take a little bit more work for us to see
Speaker 1: the first really truly autonomous vehicles available for some form
Speaker 1: of commercial purpose. It may not be for a personal vehicle,
Speaker 1: but we'll get more to that a little bit. So.
Speaker 1: He also talked about how autonomous cars have the potential
Speaker 1: to drastically change car design and more in the future.
Speaker 1: For one, obviously there's not necessarily a need for human controls,
Speaker 1: so this hasn't completely shaken out yet. Right. There's some
Speaker 1: designs for autonomous vehicles that include things like your traditional
Speaker 1: steering wheel and other controls, some of which might fold
Speaker 1: away when you go into autonomous mode. But there are
Speaker 1: other companies like Google that advocate for a complete lack
Speaker 1: of human controls uh basically because it improves safety. The
Speaker 1: idea being that if you're driving down the street and
Speaker 1: you've got a friend seeing in the passenger's seat, you
Speaker 1: don't want your friend reaching over suddenly grabbing the steering
Speaker 1: wheel and giving it a strong jerk to the right right. Well,
Speaker 1: you same thing. You don't want to have an autonomous
Speaker 1: system in control of the car and then have a
Speaker 1: human try and rest control from that, especially if if
Speaker 1: brain power wise, your friend is for example, a small
Speaker 1: child or extremely inapriated like that's probably how the technology
Speaker 1: and Google's cars would see us humans samely inebriated children. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly how how they would see us. And and
Speaker 1: for good re in I mean, you're talking about the
Speaker 1: system that has planned out what it's going to do,
Speaker 1: and if you introduce what appears to be random noise
Speaker 1: into that, you have just put what was at least
Speaker 1: in theory a safe system, uh into and and turned
Speaker 1: it into one that's not safe. So that was one
Speaker 1: of the points you made. Also said that if you
Speaker 1: don't have human controls, it means you can completely redesign
Speaker 1: the interior of cars. And we haven't really talked about
Speaker 1: this on forward Thinking, but when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's true. You could have an interior of a car
Speaker 1: not look anything like cars do right now. We've seen
Speaker 1: some artist depictions of this where all the seats are
Speaker 1: facing inward, where it's more like almost like a conference room,
Speaker 1: like there's a table in the center and your back
Speaker 1: is to the windshield. There there's still some practical considerations
Speaker 1: to think of around, like like motion sickness. I would
Speaker 1: not personally be excited about riding backwards in a car, well,
Speaker 1: you know what you always said, in the back of
Speaker 1: the car, and then you don't even have to you know,
Speaker 1: you're still facing for it or there. I've seen some
Speaker 1: designs where it's a swivel version where the front Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I totally get it because I I also if I'm
Speaker 1: sitting backward for too long in any kind of moving vehicle,
Speaker 1: I feel a little a little green around the gills.
Speaker 1: But you can also create more displays for things like entertainment.
Speaker 1: You can have a lot of other options. You can
Speaker 1: have workstations if you want to do work while you're
Speaker 1: in the car. Also could make you really motion sick
Speaker 1: if you're not used to that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: interesting alternatives to what we have often thought of as
Speaker 1: the traditional, uh interior of of a car also pointed out.
Speaker 1: Doorally pointed out that autonomous cars are safer than human drivers,
Speaker 1: and once there are enough autonomous cars on the road,
Speaker 1: you can really change what is standard car design. For example,
Speaker 1: you don't need to build in huge crumple zones if
Speaker 1: all the cars on the road or the vast majority
Speaker 1: of them are autonomous, because the likelihood of any kind
Speaker 1: of crash on that level is so low, which means
Speaker 1: you're using less material to make your cars. That's less wasteful.
Speaker 1: You can be more efficient with the material you're creating.
Speaker 1: It also means that the cars themselves weigh less. And
Speaker 1: presuming that these cars are also electric, which I think
Speaker 1: most people just assume that's the future that's gonna be
Speaker 1: it electric in one way or another, it means that
Speaker 1: you can preserve battery life. You know, their battery doesn't
Speaker 1: have to put out as much electricity to move a
Speaker 1: lighter car as it would a heavier car. You know,
Speaker 1: pretty simple stuff. But his point was that the implications
Speaker 1: of autonomous cars go well beyond you don't have to
Speaker 1: drive anymore. Um. He also brought up the idea of
Speaker 1: a universal chassis, So, in other words, you create a
Speaker 1: base for your vehicles that is common across all the
Speaker 1: lines of vehicles you make. You might have to extend
Speaker 1: it a bit for certain vehicles, like the chassis that
Speaker 1: you might use for a compact car. Obviously you would
Speaker 1: have to to a little bit for it to be
Speaker 1: like a pickup truck. But you can start with the
Speaker 1: same basic foundation and this allows you to uh to
Speaker 1: rapidly build various different vehicle types on demand, possibly because
Speaker 1: he also brought up the potential for three D printed cars.
Speaker 1: Yeah and and yeah, right, any anytime that you can
Speaker 1: streamline the manufacturing process. Here, you're saving time and energy, yes,
Speaker 1: and that's both of those are non trivial. Right, We've
Speaker 1: talked about money. But yeah, yeah, yeah, time, energy and money.
Speaker 1: It's a it's the it's the trio that's everyone's wanting to,
Speaker 1: uh really crack. We actually saw this concept championed in
Speaker 1: person orally. When I say we, I mean a crew
Speaker 1: from mouse Stuff Works did. I went to c E.
Speaker 1: S And you might remember I talked about Faraday Futures
Speaker 1: f F zero one race car concept. It was a
Speaker 1: super crazy looking race car, but it was really just
Speaker 1: an eye catcher for Faraday Future to talk about their approach,
Speaker 1: which takes this idea of let's start with a basic
Speaker 1: foundation that is very easily modifiable, and then we can
Speaker 1: create all sorts of different vehicles using this same chassis,
Speaker 1: and that reduces production cost dramatically, and ultimately it means
Speaker 1: that these types of vehicles will be less expensive to
Speaker 1: make and therefore, at least in theory, less expensive to purchase. Uh.
Speaker 1: As well as other implications. So he also talked about
Speaker 1: you could get to a point where you could design
Speaker 1: your own vehicle. Yeah, like like on the flip side,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of being less customized your could you
Speaker 1: could get something very customized. Right, So you you got
Speaker 1: like your basic chassis where essentially that that is unchangeable
Speaker 1: to some degree, But then you can sit there and
Speaker 1: decide how your car should look. You can become a
Speaker 1: car designer using some form of three D manipulation software.
Speaker 1: Should have should have that grimlin on the front like
Speaker 1: the truck and maximum overdrive you I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you could do that. I was thinking that you could
Speaker 1: go crazy like Homer Simpson when he had the chance
Speaker 1: to design his own car, like you need a horn everywhere,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. So, but you could actually
Speaker 1: design your own unique vehicle that nobody else in the
Speaker 1: world will have. Uh. And there are even some companies
Speaker 1: right now that are experimenting with this. Now. Granted, this
Speaker 1: is super high end, so you've got to have a
Speaker 1: lot of money to be able to do this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Also, you obviously need to have some some
Speaker 1: skill in design to make this, uh, something that's both
Speaker 1: gonna be a practical and attractive or if not practical,
Speaker 1: at least safe. Right. So, but but it's an interesting
Speaker 1: notion that we could get to a level of customization where,
Speaker 1: at least for some businesses, you don't you know, people
Speaker 1: will ask, well, what kind of cars that? Oh, it's
Speaker 1: my car. I made it. There is no other like it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. Uh. And then the second half of
Speaker 1: the talk discussed the hyperloop. Right, yeah, this was Chip
Speaker 1: Walters who took this concept and ran with it. So
Speaker 1: he was talking about how when Ellen Musk or Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: I usually say Ellen, but I've heard both, was talking
Speaker 1: about hyper loop. His idea was that he wanted to
Speaker 1: make the the designs that he and his engineers had
Speaker 1: come up with available for other companies to play with
Speaker 1: to turn this idea into a potential reality, and out
Speaker 1: to it. Design was one of the companies that actually
Speaker 1: took on that challenge. So first, Walter's explained the differences
Speaker 1: between their approach to creating a capsule for the hyper
Speaker 1: loop and the one that was outlined in the initial
Speaker 1: documents that Musk released, and so uh. In Musk's version,
Speaker 1: the ideas that a capsule would travel at a top
Speaker 1: speed of more than seven hundred miles per hour one
Speaker 1: thousand seven kilometers per hour. But Walter said that when
Speaker 1: their engineers started working on this and started crunching the numbers,
Speaker 1: they decided that it was probably better to design a
Speaker 1: top speed of between three or fo three to four
Speaker 1: kilometers prower as the top speed. Not that the seven
Speaker 1: hundred would have been impossible, but this would be more
Speaker 1: achievable from an engineering standpoint. It's more practical for a
Speaker 1: couple of different reasons. One about you know, the amount
Speaker 1: of energy you would need to uh push something up
Speaker 1: to that that top speed. Another would be how long
Speaker 1: you would want the acceleration to last, because obviously, if
Speaker 1: you have a short period of acceleration, you create a
Speaker 1: huge amount of force that the people writing the capsule
Speaker 1: will feel. So you want to decrease that amount, and
Speaker 1: you want the acceleration be nice and gentle, so that
Speaker 1: it's not something that everyone's concentrating on, like they're suddenly
Speaker 1: pressed back in their seat and can't move forward at all.
Speaker 1: Um And he also pointed out that this caused some
Speaker 1: other issues because if you're moving at a quote unquote
Speaker 1: slower speed, then your trip is going to take longer, right,
Speaker 1: Like a trip from San Francisco to l A will
Speaker 1: take longer. The original hyper loop design has that trip
Speaker 1: lasting about half an hour. Well, if you're going half
Speaker 1: that speed, you're talking about at least an hour to
Speaker 1: get from point A to point B, which is still incredible,
Speaker 1: but it you know, you might need to go the
Speaker 1: bathroom in an hour. You might be all right for
Speaker 1: half an hour, you might even be all right for
Speaker 1: an hour, but for longer travel times you have to
Speaker 1: start thinking, all right, well, now we've got to build
Speaker 1: in something that wasn't in the initial approach, which is lavatories,
Speaker 1: and that's just one of those practical considerations you have
Speaker 1: to make. Um So I thought that was really interesting
Speaker 1: that he talked about that. Uh. He also mentioned that
Speaker 1: the design they created had retractable wheels, so a normal
Speaker 1: operation you actually have air bearings. It's like an air
Speaker 1: sled almost inside you know, the hyperloop In case you've forgotten,
Speaker 1: it's an enclosed like tunnel like track that's elevated above
Speaker 1: the ground, but it's it's a vacuum tube or near vacuum.
Speaker 1: It's actually very low air pressure, so not a true
Speaker 1: vacuum that a capsule or several capsules actually can move through.
Speaker 1: And each capsule uses compressed air to rise up above
Speaker 1: the surface of the enclosed track and fly on down
Speaker 1: at at high speeds. And you're able to go at
Speaker 1: those high speeds because you have very low friction, very
Speaker 1: low air resistance, and that helps. But you not you
Speaker 1: might need wheels if the air system breaks down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the most practical. If you know, some something happens,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to wait for like helicopters
Speaker 1: to come get everybody off the trade or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're inside a solid capsule, inside a tunnel that is
Speaker 1: elevated above the ground. You might start feeling a wee
Speaker 1: bit anxious if it stops moving and you have no
Speaker 1: idea when it will start again. So they have these
Speaker 1: retractable wheels in their design that would deploy if the
Speaker 1: if the air sled was to stop working, and then
Speaker 1: they could just wheel to the next exit point. And
Speaker 1: I think he said, and I could be wrong about this,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure he said that in their design
Speaker 1: they made it a requirement that there should be an
Speaker 1: exit point every ten miles along the track, so it
Speaker 1: would drive all using its wheels to the next extraction
Speaker 1: point essentially, and you would exit the chamber or the
Speaker 1: you would exit the capsule into the the track, uh
Speaker 1: and then climb out from there. UH. So that was
Speaker 1: also interesting. He also talked about the fact that there
Speaker 1: would be multiple classes of capsule layouts, so sort of
Speaker 1: like how you have different classes of seats in an airplane,
Speaker 1: you would have different classes of seats in a hyperloop. UM.
Speaker 1: He first explained that Musks design allowed for two different
Speaker 1: sizes of capsules, one that would be smaller and one
Speaker 1: that would be larger, and they chose to go with
Speaker 1: a larger one for two reasons. One, the smaller one
Speaker 1: created a real feeling of claustrophobia when you think about
Speaker 1: how small it was, um. And to the larger one
Speaker 1: would allow for you to have a car stored in
Speaker 1: one of the capsules. So the idea being that if
Speaker 1: you were trying to go from San Francisco de l A,
Speaker 1: but you needed to have your car once you got
Speaker 1: l A, it could transport the car as well. UM
Speaker 1: and so uh. They showed off some of the or
Speaker 1: he showed off some of the artists renderings of what
Speaker 1: these different capsule interiors would look like. So the top
Speaker 1: of the line had the fewest number of seats, so
Speaker 1: each person was given the most space possible. And this
Speaker 1: is one where you might, Lauren, you might have to
Speaker 1: have claim a specific chair because because the four seats,
Speaker 1: they would all the two two pairs of seats would
Speaker 1: face in towards each other. And you could have like
Speaker 1: a fold away tray er table that you could lay
Speaker 1: out to act as a workstation. But again it's almost
Speaker 1: like a conference table. Now. The difference here, of course,
Speaker 1: is that you can't you can't see the outside. There's
Speaker 1: no window for you to look at, which is which
Speaker 1: is a huge part of right. So uh it's also
Speaker 1: something that some people might find create some anxiety, but
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about their solution to that in just
Speaker 1: a second. So that was the most roomy of it
Speaker 1: could be, but I'll get to it. Uh So next
Speaker 1: was a business class style capsule which had sort of
Speaker 1: roomy ish seats. What you could think of it like
Speaker 1: kind of the the comfort economy seats and some airlines.
Speaker 1: And then you had your economy class or standard class,
Speaker 1: which you know, you pack them in like sardines. And
Speaker 1: uh it looked like the you know again, in the renderings,
Speaker 1: it looked like the width of the capsule was about
Speaker 1: the same as a small commercial jet. So maybe one
Speaker 1: that has like two seats on one side and one
Speaker 1: seat on the other, something along those lines, or maybe
Speaker 1: two and two. But that's about as many as you
Speaker 1: could pack, just because the limitations on the size the
Speaker 1: interior size of the capsule UM. And here's how they
Speaker 1: tried to combat the feeling that you're just in a
Speaker 1: you know, like like essentially an elevator that you can't
Speaker 1: get out of for half an hour or an hour.
Speaker 1: They in their design they expect that the walls would
Speaker 1: be very high quality displays and you could display something
Speaker 1: on the walls that could be uh it could even
Speaker 1: be in motion, like it could be a video, not
Speaker 1: just a static picture, so that you have something to
Speaker 1: look at besides just you know, the people sitting around you.
Speaker 1: And in the examples they had, they had one that
Speaker 1: looked like you were flying over clouds like you were
Speaker 1: in a jet um with with no obstruction, like it
Speaker 1: like the whole thing is just open because you know,
Speaker 1: there are no windows the whole side of the wall
Speaker 1: as a screen. There was another one where it made
Speaker 1: it look like it was a giant aquarium. So it's
Speaker 1: really cool, but you know, again it was just sort
Speaker 1: of conceptual. There's they don't have one built. Um, so
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty interesting. And they also said
Speaker 1: that because of their design, because they're not a jet,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have the capsule accelerate to top
Speaker 1: speed right away. You can take a lot of time
Speaker 1: and have it continuously accelerate at a lower rate, thus
Speaker 1: creating less of a of a force upon the people
Speaker 1: inside the capsule. That's obviously important if you're if you're
Speaker 1: one of those people who's sitting with your back facing
Speaker 1: the front of the capsule, and if it were to
Speaker 1: accelerate quickly, you would be bent forward right. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: be pressed back in your seat, you would be folded up.
Speaker 1: So you want to make sure that that accelerative force
Speaker 1: is not so strong as to create discomfort in the passengers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to unintentionally head desk. That's not that's not fun. No,
Speaker 1: Intentional head desks are are comedic. Unintentional ones are tragic.
Speaker 1: So um. He also mentioned a thing that I never
Speaker 1: thought about before, so clearly, these these tracks are not
Speaker 1: going to be a straight line. You're not gonna have
Speaker 1: a straight line from San Francisco de l A. There's
Speaker 1: gonna be some curves. But then you think, well, curves,
Speaker 1: when you change direction, that's an acceleration, right, because it's
Speaker 1: a velocity thing, it's got a vector. Uh, So how
Speaker 1: do you change the direction without having that star trek effective?
Speaker 1: Everyone being jostled around inside the capsule whenever? It's because
Speaker 1: you can't even see when it turns coming up right,
Speaker 1: because you're inside a solid capsule. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: the way it works is it banks. Uh The actual
Speaker 1: capsule will roll up the side of the wall that
Speaker 1: the curved wall of the tunnel, and because of that,
Speaker 1: the G force will continuously be pulling you downwards, not
Speaker 1: pulling you left or right, because it has this banking ability.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing that if you had a race
Speaker 1: track with banked turns, those g forces are pulling you
Speaker 1: down more than they're they're pulling you off to the side.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever been on a road that has
Speaker 1: like a banked turn, you know it feels a lot
Speaker 1: different than if you're just going around a flat curve.
Speaker 1: To the left or right where you're being pulled to
Speaker 1: one side or the other. And I thought, well, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I never thought of that, that these these
Speaker 1: capsules are essentially kind of uh, they're not They're not
Speaker 1: always perpendicular to the ground sometimes. I mean, they're never
Speaker 1: going to be parallel to the ground. You're never gonna
Speaker 1: have a turn that's gonna be that that intense, but
Speaker 1: they're going to, you know, they allow some sway. And
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really clever idea. One other
Speaker 1: thing that they brought up that I thought was interesting
Speaker 1: I didn't put it in my notes here is that
Speaker 1: as they were talking about this future of autonomous cars
Speaker 1: and um uh and the hyper loop, is that with
Speaker 1: the autonomous cars, you suddenly have the capability of allowing
Speaker 1: more people access to mobility, which is great, but that
Speaker 1: also means it potentially could mean more miles driven by vehicles,
Speaker 1: So we might actually see a net increase in the
Speaker 1: number of miles driven by vehicles on the roads. So
Speaker 1: we might see more cars on the road in the
Speaker 1: future because autonomous cars will give more mobility and independence
Speaker 1: to people who previously had no access to that, like
Speaker 1: the elderly children, people who have visual impairments, right Exactly.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who when she has to take
Speaker 1: her medication, she cannot drive because she is prone to epilepsy. So,
Speaker 1: but she might be able to do that in an
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle. So that raises more questions about what will
Speaker 1: traffic be like in the future. And now, if autonomous
Speaker 1: cars are super smart, it might end up being all right,
Speaker 1: because they'll make more efficient use of the infrastructure than
Speaker 1: human drivers would. But we don't know that for sure, right,
Speaker 1: That's something that we can't say for sure right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this, this conversation actually leads us into these Well,
Speaker 1: it was technically the third panel that you went to, right,
Speaker 1: but it's a but it's a tied end concept. This
Speaker 1: second panel that we're going to discuss today robot cars
Speaker 1: and sharing road rage or smooth sailing. Yeah, so because
Speaker 1: we're about smooth rage, that sounds like it's a type
Speaker 1: of music. I love smooth rage at any rate. This
Speaker 1: would be as Lauren was saying, this was the third panel.
Speaker 1: I saw that, David, because it ties directly into the
Speaker 1: what I just talked about, we said to tackle it next. Uh.
Speaker 1: This panel focused on the future of autonomous cars in
Speaker 1: the concept of the shared car UH and The panelists
Speaker 1: included Frederick Sue of NATO, Shad Laws from Renault and
Speaker 1: and Nissan. He specifically works for Renault, but he says
Speaker 1: that in the United States, like that's one of the
Speaker 1: places where the brand Renault is not known, but their
Speaker 1: partner brand Nissan, everyone knows. And then Mark Platchen from
Speaker 1: bmw UH and Mark Platsch was actually a substitute. Marian
Speaker 1: wou of ge Ventures was supposed to be on the panel,
Speaker 1: but she got sick unfortunately just before south By Southwest.
Speaker 1: So NATO I mentioned with Frederick Sue, you might wonder
Speaker 1: what that company is. It's a company that may It
Speaker 1: is an app that coordinates a mobile device, several cameras,
Speaker 1: and a data infrastructure of driving information to improve fleet management. UH.
Speaker 1: It measures driving skill. So if you have like a
Speaker 1: a company like Uber and you want to UH find
Speaker 1: out if a driver is actually appropriate for your business,
Speaker 1: you could install this system and see how well they drive.
Speaker 1: UM as well as I can turn a regular car
Speaker 1: into a smart car, so you can think of it
Speaker 1: as as sort of an aftermarket smart car upgrade, and
Speaker 1: you would mount a camera essentially it goes right over
Speaker 1: where you're right behind where your rear view mirror is,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't block your view. Uh. And that coordinates
Speaker 1: with an app running on a mobile device and also
Speaker 1: the obviously the infrastructure of the app. So he was
Speaker 1: sort of the moderator Sue was. And according to Sue,
Speaker 1: the typical American car spends nine six percent of its
Speaker 1: life part. Uh, we're only driving our cars four of
Speaker 1: the entire time that they are active, and that, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty easy to say that's inefficient. That's
Speaker 1: not an efficient use of the technology. It matters, especially
Speaker 1: in cities where you gotta find a place to keep
Speaker 1: the cars, right, Yeah, especially cities where parking is a premium,
Speaker 1: things like New York City. That would be a big one, right.
Speaker 1: So uh. They also only use about two percent of
Speaker 1: all the energy they expand to move a person from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. The other are that's used
Speaker 1: for other stuff, either overcoming in efficiencies or moving the
Speaker 1: vehicle itself, but not you know, it's when you take
Speaker 1: the factor of the person out of it. So only
Speaker 1: two percent of the energy that the vehicle is using
Speaker 1: is actually doing what you needed to do, which is
Speaker 1: get a person from one point to another, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's also inefficient. So he was talking also
Speaker 1: about how electric cars could be UH an advantage to this,
Speaker 1: you could, uh with with the improvement of things like
Speaker 1: battery technology and the simplified drive train of electric car,
Speaker 1: you improve the efficiency of the overall system. UH. There's
Speaker 1: still arguments to be made about how the electricity has
Speaker 1: produced and all of that, but that that was not
Speaker 1: what he was focusing on. UH. He introduced the concept
Speaker 1: of ACES, which stands for autonomous, connected, electric and Sharing,
Speaker 1: and he had these set up in a in a
Speaker 1: slide in four corners, and then he showed related concepts
Speaker 1: between each of the elements to explain how these all
Speaker 1: fit together in the car of the future. So all
Speaker 1: of those elements are important for cars of the future,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the projected models incorporate all four
Speaker 1: into one approach. So in other words, you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to have a future with autonomous cars, or electric cars,
Speaker 1: or shared cars or connected cars, but most of the
Speaker 1: projected models have all four of those playing at least
Speaker 1: some role. UH. And he said that the autonomous car
Speaker 1: era will be akin to another industrial revolution with massive
Speaker 1: disruption across multiple industries beyond personal transportation, including shipping, so
Speaker 1: like the trucking and stry um and the airline industry.
Speaker 1: Because if you're able to get a cheap ride in
Speaker 1: an autonomous car to take you to your destination and
Speaker 1: it's less expensive than an airplane ticket and you're not
Speaker 1: as concerned about getting there in the least amount of time,
Speaker 1: that could be incredibly disruptive of incredibly um uh hard
Speaker 1: for the airline industry to handle. It may become a
Speaker 1: very different business uh in five to ten years or
Speaker 1: forty if we want to go with our usual number. So,
Speaker 1: according to laws, the safety benchmark for manually driven cars
Speaker 1: is less than one fatality for every one million kilometers traveled.
Speaker 1: And he says most nations meet this or exceed this
Speaker 1: already today. And he was making this point to say, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about making the argument that au Thomas
Speaker 1: cars need are are safer than manually driven cars. His
Speaker 1: point was manually manually driven cars are already really safe
Speaker 1: because when you take this benchmark and you look at
Speaker 1: the world, almost all the nations already meet it. Uh
Speaker 1: So in the US it's one point eight fatalities per
Speaker 1: one hundred million vehicle miles traveled. Because it's the United
Speaker 1: States and we use miles not kilometers. So remember that
Speaker 1: a mile is one point six kilometers, So actually, even
Speaker 1: though it's one point eight fatalities, it's actually less than
Speaker 1: one fatality per hundred million kilometers driven. But not all
Speaker 1: states are equal. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
Speaker 1: Wyoming leads the state states in fatalities per hundred million
Speaker 1: miles driven at one point five nine, and Massachusetts is
Speaker 1: on the low end at point five seven or one
Speaker 1: hundred million miles traveled. So I appreciate Laws this point
Speaker 1: that manually driven cars are already remarkably safe. However, that
Speaker 1: being said, it's very easy to kind of think of
Speaker 1: that in a statistics point of view. But when you
Speaker 1: start looking at hard numbers and you realize that in
Speaker 1: el s people died in the United States due to
Speaker 1: car accidents, that to me is more powerful than less
Speaker 1: than one per million kilometers dravel. Well, it means we
Speaker 1: do a lot of car driving. Yeah, yeah, We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of cars on the road and we were
Speaker 1: driving a lot. So in my mind, the safety argument
Speaker 1: is still a very relevant one. Laws was kind of saying, well,
Speaker 1: until autonomous cars proved that they are safer than manually
Speaker 1: driven cars, which are already really safe, it's a non issue.
Speaker 1: I think that based upon early results, it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue autonomous cars are less safe. There at least as
Speaker 1: safe from what we've seen so far, keeping in mind
Speaker 1: is still very early days, and maybe there will be
Speaker 1: a case. I hope there's not, but maybe there'll be
Speaker 1: a case that shows that they are not as safe
Speaker 1: and we still have a ways to go. Pletschin actually
Speaker 1: introduced what he called the three ps that are necessary
Speaker 1: for a fleet based them to work, which are proximity, prevalence,
Speaker 1: and price. So you want proximity in the sense that
Speaker 1: you want to you want cars on demand to be
Speaker 1: close to you, right. You don't want to have to
Speaker 1: wait twenty five minutes for the car to get to
Speaker 1: you to pick you up unless you've scheduled it for
Speaker 1: that amount of time. If you call a car, you
Speaker 1: want to be there pretty quickly. Uh. The prevalence is
Speaker 1: that you need to have enough cars in the area
Speaker 1: to meet demand. So if if there's a car that's
Speaker 1: two minutes away, that's awesome, But if it just so
Speaker 1: happens that's one of three cars in the city and
Speaker 1: you just lucked out. That's not gonna do you good
Speaker 1: in in the long run, right And then price, obviously,
Speaker 1: you need it to be competitive and affordable. Right now,
Speaker 1: according to Platchin, the average price per mile for services
Speaker 1: like Uber and Lift is about, you know, excusing surge pricing,
Speaker 1: is about a dollar a mile. But he thinks that
Speaker 1: using autonomous technology you can start to and with the
Speaker 1: economy of scale, you can get that down to be
Speaker 1: fifty cents per mile or maybe even as as little
Speaker 1: as twenty five cents per mile, which suddenly makes it
Speaker 1: a much more accessible means of transportation for a larger
Speaker 1: amount of the population. As for the shared nature of cars,
Speaker 1: uh Law said, there are a lot of different models
Speaker 1: out there, and not all of them follow that fleet
Speaker 1: of service cars that we've talked about, right, So we've
Speaker 1: talked about how autumas cars might mean that we don't
Speaker 1: own one of these as a personal vehicle. Rather we
Speaker 1: all rely on shared services. So one alternative he mentioned,
Speaker 1: and he said there were multiples, but this was the
Speaker 1: only example he gave, was imagined that you have sort
Speaker 1: of a communal car where you and other households have
Speaker 1: all joined up together and essentially invested in a single vehicle,
Speaker 1: so you own like one sixth of a car. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a horrible idea. I also think that because
Speaker 1: how can you ever guarantee that the car will be
Speaker 1: available when you need it unless everyone's schedule is slightly
Speaker 1: offset with each other never changes. Yeah, I can't imagine that.
Speaker 1: That just sounds awful. I mean, it's it makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense to me to do the widespread shared
Speaker 1: car network issue. Yeah, I agree, you call a car. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Plash and mentioned there are some This was actually in
Speaker 1: response to an audience question about, well, what about privacy,
Speaker 1: what about the fact that people use their cars like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of clutter in in a lot in
Speaker 1: some people's cars. Not everyone keeps their car pristine. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have stuff that they rely upon stored
Speaker 1: in their cars so it's easy to access and they
Speaker 1: don't have to carry it everywhere. And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a problem because obviously in the shared economy approach
Speaker 1: you can't do that. It's like going in a taxi cab.
Speaker 1: You don't want to leave anything behind because you will
Speaker 1: never see it. Again, but that means you can't rely
Speaker 1: on having stuff close at hand, just stored away in
Speaker 1: your mobile storage unit, which is your car. So you
Speaker 1: could argue that even though your car is parked it's time,
Speaker 1: if it's also acting as a storage unit, then it
Speaker 1: has a little more added utility, right, and you lose
Speaker 1: that in the shared version. He said, there's not really
Speaker 1: a get solution for that, although if you get the
Speaker 1: price down low enough, he says, you could have your
Speaker 1: stuff in another car and just call it on demand
Speaker 1: and it comes and brings it to you. And I thought,
Speaker 1: so you want to double or triple the number of
Speaker 1: cars out there. That seems like that would be a
Speaker 1: lot of money and a lot of of expended energy
Speaker 1: for a what I would argue a trivial benefit. But
Speaker 1: it was an interesting thing to hear about. So in
Speaker 1: both of the the autonomous car panels I saw, there
Speaker 1: were people who were saying, listen, I don't think that
Speaker 1: personal ownership is going to go away. I don't think
Speaker 1: that we're going to get to a point where the
Speaker 1: government will outlaw manually driven, personally owned vehicles. But one
Speaker 1: guy said it may turn into something like horse ownership
Speaker 1: that few people actually own a car. There will be somewhere,
Speaker 1: there will be use cases where a car is necessary,
Speaker 1: Like in I would argue again in rural areas, it
Speaker 1: makes more sense to have a manually driven, personally owned
Speaker 1: vehicle than a car sharing service. Um. And also if
Speaker 1: you want to do things like off roading, if you
Speaker 1: want to do recreational driving, obviously you would need to
Speaker 1: have your own manually driven car, or or own seven
Speaker 1: own a fleet of them and allow people to rent them,
Speaker 1: or just or just hobbyists, which I suppose is a
Speaker 1: word that's more often applied to car enthusiasts than to
Speaker 1: horse enthusiasts. But you know, there are plenty of people
Speaker 1: out there who just like horses a whole bunch and
Speaker 1: want to have one. And you know, for like Scott
Speaker 1: Benjamin not with the horses, with the car thing, like
Speaker 1: I'm sure would you would have to. You would have
Speaker 1: to pry his car away from his cold dead hands. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to talk to Scott later this
Speaker 1: week and I'm going to drop some bombs on him
Speaker 1: to find out how he reacts. Well, I'll be nice
Speaker 1: to Scott to him. One thing that occurs to me
Speaker 1: is that there are some people for whom they really
Speaker 1: need the car to be a mobile storage unit, for example,
Speaker 1: for the work they do. Like if you are a plumber,
Speaker 1: or if you are you know, anybody who has a
Speaker 1: set of tools or materials in your truck that you
Speaker 1: use at various places that you go, that's seems like
Speaker 1: you pretty much need to have your own vehicle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unless you have unless you have some sort of of
Speaker 1: plumbing business that's large enough to have its own fleet
Speaker 1: of dedicated vehicles that are outfitted with the right tools.
Speaker 1: But that ends up meaning that you would you couldn't
Speaker 1: have independent contractors anymore. And I can't imagine that that's
Speaker 1: going to be a case, at least not until we
Speaker 1: get the plumber robots, which they don't. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: have all the tools just stored away and then they
Speaker 1: just hover over to your place and and they hoover
Speaker 1: out the pipes, or maybe in the future, instead of
Speaker 1: calling a plumber, people just call a car and then
Speaker 1: use the bathroom in the car. There was also talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that there there would need to be
Speaker 1: systems to maintain the exactly and that would just do
Speaker 1: a scan and anything that pops up on the scan
Speaker 1: and say time to go back to HQ. Oh never mind.
Speaker 1: I didn't need to go anywhere. I was trying to
Speaker 1: trans transition, however, to by making the plumber robot thing
Speaker 1: to the last panel I saw, right, yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is not about transit. No, it's about robots. It wasn't plumbers,
Speaker 1: it was not about plumbers. It's not about the future.
Speaker 1: It's called The panel was called one Robot Doesn't Fit
Speaker 1: All uh. And this one featured four people, UH, product
Speaker 1: designer nure Kim Uh, the executive director of Interaction Design
Speaker 1: Research at Stanford University UH, Wendy Jew and then former
Speaker 1: Google X User Experience researcher Leila Takayama. And finally the
Speaker 1: c IO of Fellow Robotics Fafadu, Rena Tonga. And this
Speaker 1: was a fascinating panel. I will let me go ahead
Speaker 1: and say this right off the top. I couldn't hear
Speaker 1: Rena Tonga very well. He he was. He's a soft
Speaker 1: spoken guy, and my hearing is bad. But it was
Speaker 1: a great panel. All the women were phenomenal, enthusiastic and
Speaker 1: incredibly knowledgeable, and every question that was asked was a
Speaker 1: good one, and every answer was really great. I wish
Speaker 1: I could have shot video of it, but you can't
Speaker 1: at off myself West, So this is as close as
Speaker 1: you're gonna get if you weren't actually there. So the
Speaker 1: panel mostly focused on how big a challenge it is
Speaker 1: to design robots. Um and Takeyama pointed out that it's
Speaker 1: much easier to design a single purpose robot, something that
Speaker 1: is meant to do one thing and one thing only,
Speaker 1: and you can you can design everything about that robot
Speaker 1: to dedicate it toward that task. That is much easier
Speaker 1: than building a general purpose robot. This is something we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show before. Yeah, and tuky I'm
Speaker 1: actually went ahead and said, like, the more stuff you're
Speaker 1: robot does, the crappier it performs. That was essentially the
Speaker 1: way she said it too, which was awesome. Uh and
Speaker 1: her her example because each panelist was asked to name
Speaker 1: what their favorite robot was, and her favorite robot was
Speaker 1: Mo from Wally and Mo was the little tiny just
Speaker 1: as Mo and it tries to scrub. It's a cleaner robot.
Speaker 1: It just scrubs dirt off of things. And there are
Speaker 1: times in the film when when Mo is critical to
Speaker 1: the mission. Yes, and she loves Mo. She says, Mo
Speaker 1: knows what its purposes and that is what Moe does.
Speaker 1: That is all MO does, and Mode does it with efficiency,
Speaker 1: and that's why I love this character. So that was
Speaker 1: really very endearing. They actually showed a clip from the film,
Speaker 1: but Takiyama and you both talked about how as a
Speaker 1: human it can be really difficult to tell what a
Speaker 1: robot is doing, particularly if the robot is in a
Speaker 1: mapping mode where it's it's examining its environment, but it's
Speaker 1: not directly acting on anything at the moment, you might
Speaker 1: just think it's being idle. Right, there's no necessarily there's
Speaker 1: not necessarily an outward indication that anything is going on. Besides,
Speaker 1: it's just sitting there all right, unlike a human person,
Speaker 1: who you know, if they're trying, if you humans trying
Speaker 1: to figure out where to go next. They might be
Speaker 1: looking around. They might be checking a map. They might
Speaker 1: be just standing with their head tilted in a in
Speaker 1: a perpetually confused manner. They may be looking around in
Speaker 1: a little bit of you know, a panic, hoping that
Speaker 1: they can find help. There's at least some sort of
Speaker 1: visual indication that something's going on. Uh, so uh, Takiyama
Speaker 1: actually told a really funny story about that. Well, first,
Speaker 1: first I should mention that, um, that Jews point was
Speaker 1: that there's also an issue where there's a trust barrier.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what the robot is doing, it's
Speaker 1: hard for you to trust the robot, right you If
Speaker 1: you suspect the robot might be doing something on the sly,
Speaker 1: then it's gonna make you feel nervous. And she brought
Speaker 1: up the example of Amazon Echo. This actually ended up
Speaker 1: being an interesting discussion because, uh, fava dude didn't think
Speaker 1: of Echo as being a robot, but Jews said, no,
Speaker 1: it totally is a robot. It's doing work on behalf
Speaker 1: of humans. It's doing it in the background. Sure, there's
Speaker 1: not a physical body moving around, but it is an
Speaker 1: artificially intelligent construct that's doing work on behalf of humans.
Speaker 1: And uh, it doesn't necessarily fit the traditional definition of robot,
Speaker 1: but still doing what a robot does. Sure, it's still
Speaker 1: it's a robot. Yeah, it's at least it's at least
Speaker 1: Lauren just hits some air quote. Yes, it's at least
Speaker 1: the back end of of a robe addic system. It
Speaker 1: just lacks the physical body to move around. Doesn't need
Speaker 1: it for what it does. They just need to give
Speaker 1: it a single wheel. Yeah. Well. One of the things
Speaker 1: that she pointed out is that it's impossible to tell
Speaker 1: when an Amazon Echo is really listening in because because
Speaker 1: you can, you can use voice commands to activate it. Right,
Speaker 1: you say alexa, and it wakes up. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you have an Amazon Echo and I just woke
Speaker 1: it up, I'm sorry anyway. Because it's listening, you don't
Speaker 1: know if it's spying, if it's recording, if it's transmitting.
Speaker 1: That makes people nervous. It creates a trust issue. She says,
Speaker 1: there needs to be some sort of system built in
Speaker 1: to make people feel better, like they know what's happening. Alexa,
Speaker 1: order ten thou drinking straws man, Yes, okay so. Taka
Speaker 1: Yama also demonstrated how this barrier barrier could create real
Speaker 1: engineering issues. She used a concrete example from her own
Speaker 1: past and told a story about how she used to
Speaker 1: work in an office building where engineers were working on
Speaker 1: robots uh and and testing them out all the time,
Speaker 1: which meant there are robots just cluttering up the hallway
Speaker 1: and there's a particular hallway that her office was off
Speaker 1: of that often was used for robot testing, and she said,
Speaker 1: I got to the point where I hated the things
Speaker 1: because I had to try and find a way to
Speaker 1: get around them while doing my day to day stuff.
Speaker 1: And she talked about how in some cases the robots
Speaker 1: might be standing in front of a door, and what
Speaker 1: the robots are actually doing is mapping out the door.
Speaker 1: They're looking at the door's dimensions. They're identifying what is
Speaker 1: the handle, what is the mechanism for the handle, how
Speaker 1: do you operate it? Does the door open inward or
Speaker 1: does it open outward? These are things that we humans
Speaker 1: can figure out very quickly by looking at a door,
Speaker 1: right and if we if we don't figure it out properly,
Speaker 1: if we pull when it's a push door, we figure
Speaker 1: that out and then change our behavior and move on. Robots,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily the case, uh, And it could take
Speaker 1: hours for a robot to do all the mapping before
Speaker 1: it's able to take an action. And she talked about
Speaker 1: tim where she passed between the robot and a door
Speaker 1: in order to get around it, and immediately engineers were
Speaker 1: running around the corner screaming at her, like what did
Speaker 1: you do we you just ruined two hours of work
Speaker 1: because I don't know. The robots just sitting there, it's
Speaker 1: not doing anything. How am I supposed to know it's
Speaker 1: doing something when it's just sitting there. All For me,
Speaker 1: it's just an obstacle that's in my way. And so
Speaker 1: that's what kind of got her thinking about creating robots
Speaker 1: that have some form of expression. And the benefit is
Speaker 1: not to the robot necessarily, at least not directly, but
Speaker 1: more to humans for human robot interactions. Yeah, I've read
Speaker 1: about these concepts before. One of them is is it
Speaker 1: the Baxter robot that does this where it has eyes?
Speaker 1: And it's not so much like you say, it's not
Speaker 1: for the robot, because the robot can see anyway with
Speaker 1: its cameras, but it has eyes that are displayed on
Speaker 1: the screen so that the person can tell what the
Speaker 1: robot is looking at. Yes, and that's that's exactly what
Speaker 1: Takeyama and you were both arguing for. They're saying, this
Speaker 1: is absolutely critical to build meaningful human robot interactions that
Speaker 1: are effective and not distracting or destructive. And so she said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, she created a paper. She worked with a
Speaker 1: guy from Pixar to create a series of animations to
Speaker 1: kind of get people's reactions to various scenarios in which
Speaker 1: a robot might react or not react. And she said,
Speaker 1: what if you had a robot that's standing there looking
Speaker 1: at a door. It's mapping things out, just as the
Speaker 1: situation was in her real past, but it occasionally reaches
Speaker 1: up and sort of makes a scratching motion at its
Speaker 1: head like it's thinking. She said, well, that's an indication
Speaker 1: that it's actually doing something. It's not just sitting idle,
Speaker 1: it's not just trying to charge itself or something, and
Speaker 1: that that would give an indication to the human Oh,
Speaker 1: I should skirt around the other side, because this robot
Speaker 1: is actually trying to do something. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but it's clear it's it's occupied with something.
Speaker 1: Um And she also talked about creating a series of
Speaker 1: animations indicate a robot's reaction to either succeeding at a
Speaker 1: task or failing at it. And again, it's not for
Speaker 1: the robots benefit, it's for the people around the robot.
Speaker 1: And she gave a very simple example again of opening
Speaker 1: a door. So imagine that you have a robot and
Speaker 1: it uh it tries to open a door, but for
Speaker 1: some reason is incapable of doing so. Maybe it's grip
Speaker 1: is at the wrong point on the handle and it
Speaker 1: slips right off. She said. If you have a robot
Speaker 1: that does it but doesn't react to the failure, then
Speaker 1: people just think of it as a dumb robot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't know that the robot knows that it fails exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just think that the robot just went through. It's
Speaker 1: almost like if someone were remote controlling it and they
Speaker 1: just missed a little bit, and they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: all right, it's just a dumb thing. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: any intelligence of its own, so you need to give
Speaker 1: it sadness. Yes, yes, And so the Pixar animator did
Speaker 1: this thing, and it kind of looked a little not
Speaker 1: exactly like Wally, but you know, kind of similar in
Speaker 1: that it had an articulated head and had arms and uh,
Speaker 1: kind of a blocky body. In the anime, it's very
Speaker 1: simple animation where the robot reaches forward that the hand
Speaker 1: slips off the handle, and then the robot SAgs a
Speaker 1: little bit like it's shoulder like what well, the block
Speaker 1: essentially SAgs down a bit as if it's disappointed in
Speaker 1: itself slightly deflates. Yeah, And the people that she talked to,
Speaker 1: after they viewed the various animations they were supposed to
Speaker 1: rank how intelligent they thought each robot was. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing was they thought the robots that failed but indicated
Speaker 1: they understood that they failed. In other words, they made
Speaker 1: this expression were more intelligent than robots that succeeded but
Speaker 1: showed no no response at all. So there are also
Speaker 1: were success ones, and my favorite was a success one
Speaker 1: where the robot opens up a door and then immediately
Speaker 1: like like they had a little column that represented a person.
Speaker 1: So the robot opens up a door and immediately turns
Speaker 1: its head to the person and looks down, looks up
Speaker 1: and and and perks up as if to say, look
Speaker 1: what I did. And everyone in the audience went, uh.
Speaker 1: These are very simplistic representations too. They weren't like like
Speaker 1: realistic or true to life or anything. So I thought
Speaker 1: this was fascinating, This idea of designing robots for human
Speaker 1: robot interaction, again taking human psychology into account, because often
Speaker 1: from the roboticist side, they're looking at a functionality approach, right,
Speaker 1: they need to find a way to make a robot
Speaker 1: be able to do the thing it's designed to do.
Speaker 1: But if that robot is designed to interact within a
Speaker 1: human environment, part of what it has to do is
Speaker 1: interact with humans. It's usually the trickiest part. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe there is a human Robot Interactions lab here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia Tech in there. Yeah, you've spoken to people there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting. I mean, there's and there's so
Speaker 1: many different ways of creating this. There were some great
Speaker 1: questions at that panel. One guy asked, because he worked
Speaker 1: in a company, either it makes industrial robots or they
Speaker 1: use industrial robots. I can't remember precisely, but he said,
Speaker 1: what do you think about what are ways that we
Speaker 1: can design industrial robots so that they create a a
Speaker 1: a warning that people can pick up on and not
Speaker 1: just dismiss. And they were saying, yeah, it's really tricky
Speaker 1: because if you create an expression that becomes uh that
Speaker 1: the people associate with being human. There's also the danger
Speaker 1: of dismissing something like you might dismiss a person who
Speaker 1: you don't think is really an authority figure telling you, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that, and you're like, well, they don't even
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, and they said, this is
Speaker 1: actually a really hard problem to solve because you want
Speaker 1: to create the safest possible response. But you right now
Speaker 1: people don't agree on what that actually is. I would
Speaker 1: say that what you should do is, when you're designing
Speaker 1: dangerous industrial robots, you should design them to look scary.
Speaker 1: You should specifically design them, like hire people to design
Speaker 1: them so they look like angry monster and maybe have
Speaker 1: like like circular saws on the shoulder they're just constantly rotating. Well, no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily make them more dangerous than they already are,
Speaker 1: but to make them look like a scary creature show
Speaker 1: Reach for the Stars man, come on, maybe like like
Speaker 1: edgeless circular saws, so they're not actually more dangerous, they
Speaker 1: just look and have them just roar and breathe fire
Speaker 1: every now and then. I think if you make it
Speaker 1: make a really obnoxious sound. Actually, instead of making them scary,
Speaker 1: just make them annoying, like like like a field of
Speaker 1: urkle bots, like putting together. Everybody want to hug r B.
Speaker 1: That's actually I'm thinking of what's the what's the little
Speaker 1: robot in the Borderland's game. I'm thinking of that what
Speaker 1: clap trap. Make it like clap trap, where you know,
Speaker 1: after you're around it for thirty seconds, you're like, I
Speaker 1: would rather be anywhere else but here. Um. It was
Speaker 1: a really cool conversation. I'm glad I got a chance
Speaker 1: to go to that panel, and in fact, I have
Speaker 1: to thank Lauren for that, because I originally had a
Speaker 1: different panel on my schedule and she said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we just switch it out for this other one?
Speaker 1: And it was totally the right call. It was a
Speaker 1: much better well, I don't know it was a much
Speaker 1: better panel because because he didn't see the other one,
Speaker 1: but it was a very formative and entertaining panel, So
Speaker 1: huge props to all of the people and south By
Speaker 1: Southwest who who did these panels. Is really interesting stuff
Speaker 1: and um, and it was great to kind of get
Speaker 1: that that view of the future. I think in all
Speaker 1: cases it was more optimistic than otherwise, which again kind
Speaker 1: of speaks to me. So I'm really glad that we
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to go there and that I had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to sit down on some of these panels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a really exciting conference overall. I definitely recommend
Speaker 1: if if people are interested as well, probably many of
Speaker 1: you are. And uh in hearing industry experts talk about
Speaker 1: these kind of things, and you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of marketing involved too, I think, But but it's it's
Speaker 1: really it's really lovely getting to actually talk to these people.
Speaker 1: It is and uh, of course there are tons of
Speaker 1: other things that are awesome about the surrounding event, like
Speaker 1: the tacos, which I will talk about at lant How
Speaker 1: many how many tacos did you eat while you were there?
Speaker 1: Did you have account a total taco? Only had five?
Speaker 1: I think I think guy might be like the like
Speaker 1: the loss the loss leader in taco consuming. Actually wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I had nine. I forgot I've got about
Speaker 1: the two airport tacos. I actually had three, like immediately
Speaker 1: upon landing. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why that
Speaker 1: they are addictive. Well at any rate, uh, I do
Speaker 1: recommend checking out south By Southwest if you get the opportunity.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty it's pretty expensive to get a badge,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of things against surrounding the
Speaker 1: conference if you're if you're not able to afford the
Speaker 1: direct conference, there are a lot of opportunities to talk
Speaker 1: to super smart people in all different fields of music,
Speaker 1: film interactivity, and there's a there's a lot of areas
Speaker 1: that you can get into with a guest pass, which
Speaker 1: is basically just like an online registration process you do,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go through, you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay any money for it, right, So definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: And hey, check out some of the videos that are
Speaker 1: coming out on now dot house to works dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also our YouTube channel. You can you can find
Speaker 1: them with Google. I'm sure we've got quite a few, right.
Speaker 1: We've got something about Thomas Car's future of transit. You
Speaker 1: did one about that, right, and I get I did
Speaker 1: uh one about robots um and some other stuff too. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we've got a ton of amazing video. Our crew worked
Speaker 1: their butts off to get all around Austin and shoot
Speaker 1: those and edit those in a timely manner. So check
Speaker 1: that out. Also, if you have any questions or suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes, send us a message. Our email address
Speaker 1: is f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Or drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At
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Speaker 1: the future of technology, I'll visit forward thinking dot Com,
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