Speaker 1: Guess what will? What's that mango? So I know you've
Speaker 1: gotten really unto running recently, and I think there's an
Speaker 1: accessory from Japan you really need to invest in. It's
Speaker 1: called tomaton. Tomaton that sounds cool. So so what's a toomaton? Well,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a robot backpack
Speaker 1: that feeds you tomatoes on the run. That is not
Speaker 1: what I expected to say that that is much less
Speaker 1: cool than I expected. Basically, there's this giant cartoony tomato
Speaker 1: that sits on your head and it's got this clear
Speaker 1: tube full of tomatoes that kind of hangs down your spine.
Speaker 1: And as you run, this robotic arm swoops back to
Speaker 1: grab a tomato, and then it swoops down in front
Speaker 1: of you with that juicy fruit and sticks it in
Speaker 1: your face. And I'm kind of surprised more elite athletes
Speaker 1: don't use it. Well, you know, my kids already make
Speaker 1: fun of me for what I look like when I run,
Speaker 1: and so I can only imagine this is just going
Speaker 1: to give them that much more ammunition, which is probably
Speaker 1: all the more reason I should do it. But I'm
Speaker 1: curious why tomatoes, of all things I've never wanted a
Speaker 1: tomato while I was running, Well you haven't before, but
Speaker 1: now you will. So it was invented by this company
Speaker 1: called Kagome, which is Japan's premiere tomato juice and catchup
Speaker 1: manufacturer apparently. But I am not done talking about Tamaton
Speaker 1: just yet. So while the original Tmaton is pretty good
Speaker 1: for five k's, you might want to look into the
Speaker 1: petite Tamaton for marathons. It's uh, it's lighter, smaller. Instead
Speaker 1: of um that robot arm feeder, It's got a trigger
Speaker 1: and a tube and you can actually shoot tiny tomatoes
Speaker 1: in your mouth anytime you want. It does have a
Speaker 1: tomato timer that prevents you from eating too many tomatoes
Speaker 1: too quickly, so you do pace yourself with it. So
Speaker 1: that's that's really impressive. I can't say that I've ever
Speaker 1: been at risk of feeding myself too many of anything
Speaker 1: while on a long run, but whatever, that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's just the first of nine facts about robots
Speaker 1: we're covering for today's show, Celesidising Day their podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh Ticketer and
Speaker 1: sitting behind the soundproof glass. Now this guy is working
Speaker 1: on another movie reboot now Mango. We've seen him work
Speaker 1: on so many ideas for movie reboots, and this one
Speaker 1: is for a feminist reboot for Short Circuit too. So
Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be a big one. This
Speaker 1: may be his most brilliant one yet. But that's that's
Speaker 1: our friend and producer Tristan McNeil over there. That's amazing Tristan.
Speaker 1: So I know we both love robots, and I certainly
Speaker 1: was a Jetsons fan. I had kept Sella as a kid. Uh,
Speaker 1: lots of radio shot kits, and you know, I loved
Speaker 1: building weird sort of automated inventions. But there's actually another
Speaker 1: reason we're doing a show on robots today, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So one of our four her guest Simone Yatch, and
Speaker 1: you probably know her for her amazing crappy robots that
Speaker 1: she builds and tests on YouTube. And we are huge
Speaker 1: fans of Simone and if you think about some of
Speaker 1: the examples of things that she's built, she built the
Speaker 1: the robot that shampoo's your hair for you just got
Speaker 1: a hilarious video of this, or the alarm clock that
Speaker 1: wakes you up just by slapping you in the face,
Speaker 1: which was also incredibly amusing. But you know, she she
Speaker 1: got some not so great news, though she um feels
Speaker 1: like she's gonna be okay. So she found out that
Speaker 1: she has a brain tumor, is going to undergo surgery
Speaker 1: this month, and they're optimistic about the prospects for this.
Speaker 1: But we still we really wanted to wish her the
Speaker 1: very best of luck, so we made this little nine
Speaker 1: things in her honor. That's right, So get well soon, simone.
Speaker 1: So back to our love of robots for a second.
Speaker 1: So people always ask me about my favorite stories and
Speaker 1: facts for Mental Floss, and they're a handful I always
Speaker 1: talked about. But my favorite invention has to be this
Speaker 1: robotic fish that gets other fish to follow it, because
Speaker 1: it sounds like a small idea, like why do you
Speaker 1: care that you can create a leader among fish? And
Speaker 1: the answer is so much more interesting. It's so that,
Speaker 1: like if there's an oil spill or a disaster or
Speaker 1: something devastating, you can actually lead schools of fish away
Speaker 1: from that disaster. And I just think that's amazing. It
Speaker 1: is pretty cool, and I would say it's I mean
Speaker 1: it's not as important as the backpack Tomato robot, but
Speaker 1: it feels like it's almost as important as the backpack
Speaker 1: to make no picking on thomasons. What robot factor are
Speaker 1: you gonna start with? Well, all right, well, here's one
Speaker 1: that I hadn't really thought about before, and it's what
Speaker 1: personality your vacuum cleaners should have? And you know, I
Speaker 1: know you've probably thought about this. You come up with
Speaker 1: lots of great questions that I had never thought about it,
Speaker 1: and apparently a lot of scientists hadn't thought about it either.
Speaker 1: So robots are mostly supposed to be functional, right, but
Speaker 1: you know, we're obviously going to have preferences for one
Speaker 1: robot vacuum cleaner over another if they exhibit these certain
Speaker 1: behaviors with their sounds. You know, if you think about
Speaker 1: the sounds they make, or the light they put out,
Speaker 1: or the motions they go through, you know we will
Speaker 1: have preferences among these. So kay, can you talk me
Speaker 1: through a few of these. Well, let's say you programmed
Speaker 1: a robot vacuum cleaner to not leave a certain area
Speaker 1: until it removed a spot. So just imagine it's just
Speaker 1: going over and over the same area, and these kind
Speaker 1: of short jarring motions and if it does that, it
Speaker 1: might come across as obsessive, you know, just going back
Speaker 1: and forth over that one unimportant spot while there's this
Speaker 1: whole room it needs to vacuum. So scientists at delfta
Speaker 1: University in the Netherlands decided to determine what types of
Speaker 1: personalities people want from their vacuum cleaners. So they rounded
Speaker 1: up fifteen early adopters. These are people who were predisposed
Speaker 1: to buying robot vacuum cleaners. And then things got a
Speaker 1: little bit weird, so they hired a bunch of actors
Speaker 1: to either crawl around or walk around pretending to be
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaners with different personality traits. Now, at first I
Speaker 1: thought this was just made up, but this was an
Speaker 1: actual study. And the only noises they could make were
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner noise, so you think worrying and sucking sounds.
Speaker 1: But they could change patterns and ways that they moved,
Speaker 1: and they were actually asked to act out these thirty
Speaker 1: different personality traits for vacuum cleaners. How in the world
Speaker 1: they could have these thirty different possible traits, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but you know, just as examples. They could be bold
Speaker 1: or calm, or talkative or several other things. But it's
Speaker 1: just crazy to imagine this. That's funny. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a terrible improv activity. But as it does, so when
Speaker 1: did the scientists actually learn from this? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: most of it was honestly pretty straightforward, like you don't
Speaker 1: want to chatterbox for a vacuum cleaner, and most people
Speaker 1: also don't want something that feels whimsical, like it might
Speaker 1: make more sense for a vacuum cleaner to move in
Speaker 1: circles or you know, maybe these unpredictable patterns once it's
Speaker 1: mapped out all of the dirt that's in the room,
Speaker 1: but people actually want to see straight lines and routine.
Speaker 1: So whether that's actually, you know, the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to vacuum a room, people perceive that to be the
Speaker 1: most efficient. But yeah, actually, honestly, I just like that.
Speaker 1: We had to hire a bunch of Shakespearean trained actors
Speaker 1: to play the role of like vacuum number three, just
Speaker 1: to figure all of this out. That's horrible, But I
Speaker 1: do think it's an interesting idea about how much should
Speaker 1: we care for and about our robots. And I was
Speaker 1: looking at something to that same effect. I found this
Speaker 1: article from two thousand and thirteen that you know, these
Speaker 1: soldiers who were using bomb disposal robots on battlefields were
Speaker 1: actually becoming too emotionally attached to them, or at least
Speaker 1: that was the concern. And the robots weren't particularly cute,
Speaker 1: like they didn't have like sweet faces or anything, but
Speaker 1: but the soldiers actually started treating them as mascots or pets,
Speaker 1: and then when they were destroyed, they actually have funerals
Speaker 1: for them. But one of the big questions for robot
Speaker 1: makers at the time was just how anthropomorphic, like do
Speaker 1: you design these instruments, because you know, you do want
Speaker 1: soldiers to care for the equipment and maintain it properly,
Speaker 1: but you don't want them to care so much and
Speaker 1: be so gingerly with these things that they refused to
Speaker 1: put them in harm's way. You know, with too much
Speaker 1: emotional attachment, you might not send your robot into a
Speaker 1: space that you think dangerous, and that's precisely what they're
Speaker 1: built for. Yeah, that is pretty interesting. It's not something
Speaker 1: i'd really thought about before. All Right, well, here's a
Speaker 1: robot that you might have a little bit less sympathy for,
Speaker 1: so you remember the carnivorous furniture we read about And
Speaker 1: this was a while back, but you remember this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like it was some European designer was something,
Speaker 1: and they'd created these porch lamps that were, um, they
Speaker 1: were like powered by catching and digesting insects and flies.
Speaker 1: It was a little gruesome for my taste. Well, if
Speaker 1: that was gruesome for you, this is definitely not going
Speaker 1: to ease your anxieties. And this comes from two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: There was a Wired article and they reported that the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense was funding battlefield robots that could power
Speaker 1: themselves by collecting organic matter. Now that organic matter included
Speaker 1: human corpses, So that's just great. We're gonna have these
Speaker 1: flesh powered battle bots on the fields now, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's true, that's exactly what they are. And it's like
Speaker 1: these scientists have never watched a sci fi horror movie.
Speaker 1: And it feels pretty predictable how your war might end
Speaker 1: in all of this, And and honestly, the worst part
Speaker 1: is that the project is called let's see, it's called
Speaker 1: energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or EATER for short. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much I love that fact, I feel
Speaker 1: like you're just viewing my nightmares. But speaking of human
Speaker 1: robot relations, I'd like you to know that we've got
Speaker 1: work to do on both sides of that equation. And
Speaker 1: this comes from the story of a little robot called Hitchbot.
Speaker 1: So Hitchbot was built around two thousand fifteen, and it
Speaker 1: was this ultra q hitchhiking robot that's only real mission
Speaker 1: was to see the world and find some good humanity.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a nice idea. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: understand exactly what that means. So how did hitch Bot work. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a Canadian creation and it was solar powered. Um,
Speaker 1: it had led lights, it wore a smile all the time,
Speaker 1: and had these rain boots and uh, hitchpot was about
Speaker 1: the size of a small child. So it was pretty
Speaker 1: hard not to love this cute robot. And it was
Speaker 1: also built to be light enough that you could just
Speaker 1: pick it up and buckle it into your back seat.
Speaker 1: The whole idea was it would take photos along the
Speaker 1: way to document the trip, and it had a few
Speaker 1: small benefits for the people who picked it up, like
Speaker 1: it came with a cigarette lighter and adapter. So I
Speaker 1: guess you could charge your phone from it or whatever.
Speaker 1: But the idea was like the creators would put a
Speaker 1: destination on hitchpot. So one of the destinations with like
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and they tell people to pick him up
Speaker 1: and then drop them off somewhere you thought someone else
Speaker 1: might pick him up. Really easy directions, right, So hitchbot
Speaker 1: traveled across Canada, he took a trip across Europe, and
Speaker 1: then he came to the US. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: setup for something. So what happened exactly? So hitchpot had
Speaker 1: this great bucket list he wanted to see before you
Speaker 1: got to San Francisco. You want to see like jazz
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. You wanted to see the magic of
Speaker 1: Disney World, various other landmarks. And he started his trip
Speaker 1: well from Massachusetts. But then two weeks later he was
Speaker 1: found dismembered in Philadelphia. Oh no, that's terrible. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's doubly sad. When you read his goal on his
Speaker 1: home page, it reads, quote, I hope that my hitchhiking
Speaker 1: trip will allow me to meet many interesting people, see
Speaker 1: beautiful places, and learn more about humanity. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the lesson is you're not supposed to go
Speaker 1: to Philly to learn about humanity, but apparently not well.
Speaker 1: Speaking about robots learning, I found this great article and
Speaker 1: news scientists, and it was called eight hilarious ways AI
Speaker 1: has outsmarted us to get the job done. It's a
Speaker 1: really fun piece because you know, we mostly only think
Speaker 1: that humans and animals can come up with creative solutions,
Speaker 1: and I really don't think about robots being able to
Speaker 1: do that. But these evolutionary algorithms do the same thing.
Speaker 1: And as the computers are trying to optimize tasks based
Speaker 1: on the rules you give them, it's pretty funny because
Speaker 1: they actually end up failing in some of the most
Speaker 1: ridiculous ways that are that are great to read about.
Speaker 1: So I already like this, but I'm curious about the specifics.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a couple Well, one of the
Speaker 1: scientists who has interview put it this way quote, if
Speaker 1: you close one loophole, the artificial intelligence finds another. To
Speaker 1: some extent, it feels like you're wily coyote with the roadrunner.
Speaker 1: You set up these wildly complex systems that fail in
Speaker 1: ways you didn't expect. So you know, for instance, he
Speaker 1: has the computer to create a creature that jumps really high,
Speaker 1: and the way it measured how high the jump was
Speaker 1: was by how high the creature's foot was off the ground.
Speaker 1: So instead of trying to train the creature to jump
Speaker 1: this wiley AI just had this creature do a somersault
Speaker 1: on the ground and then kick its feet up mid
Speaker 1: role and so it's just you imagine, this is pretty
Speaker 1: fun to see. But there was also a different simulation
Speaker 1: where the AI was supposed to create the fastest possible creature,
Speaker 1: but instead of designing a snake or like some aerodynamic
Speaker 1: hawk or something like that, it basically spent all its
Speaker 1: time building this giant creature and then all they did
Speaker 1: was push it over because you know, the velocity the
Speaker 1: fall was faster than anything else that it could possibly
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, I was trying to even
Speaker 1: think like how they would screw that one up. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I think my favorite way that AI failed was when
Speaker 1: it was tasked with limiting a computer's processor usage. So
Speaker 1: the solution the robot just turned the computer off. I
Speaker 1: love that actually, So here's a click fact. It's in
Speaker 1: a similar vein. I I was looking up a cutting
Speaker 1: edge story on how far robots had come in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven and uh scientists in NYC in Japan designed
Speaker 1: this really cute wine bot and the idea was that
Speaker 1: you could feed it wine, cheese, or meat, those three
Speaker 1: things and it would identify the food for you, kind
Speaker 1: of like a personal somalia or a metal gastronomist, that's
Speaker 1: what they called it. And it actually do it without
Speaker 1: tasting the food too, So you can actually put a
Speaker 1: wine bottle in front of it and the robot could
Speaker 1: tell if the wine was authentic and the beverage matched
Speaker 1: the label outside the bottle. That would have been good
Speaker 1: for our old wine frauds episode. Yeah, But you know
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that after impressing journalists with the demonstration,
Speaker 1: this cameraman put his hand up to the robot up
Speaker 1: and the robot identified the human hand is bacon. So
Speaker 1: apparently the tech fact then still had a little ways
Speaker 1: to go. Wow, that would be unfortunate if your hand
Speaker 1: tasted like or smelled like bacon. Rather, I think that
Speaker 1: would just be be torture. But you know, also I'm
Speaker 1: a little curious because cannibals have always said humans taste
Speaker 1: like chickens, so maybe they're a little off. I know
Speaker 1: my feeling is that, like maybe bacon So delicious and
Speaker 1: cannibals are just trying to protect their interests and keep
Speaker 1: hipsters away from human meat. I I don't know, But
Speaker 1: what I do know is we've got two more robot
Speaker 1: facts to give you right after this break. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Part Time Genius. We're talking robots or mango. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you knew this. Robots as people used
Speaker 1: to call them back in the fifties. Is that true?
Speaker 1: That's how it was pronounced. Yeah. I was actually watching
Speaker 1: this old documentary and it was about how scientists we're
Speaker 1: working on robot butlers of the future, and the narrator
Speaker 1: and even the people on the screen kept calling them robots.
Speaker 1: For somebody, that's super weird. So I feel like we
Speaker 1: should bring that fact. But what's your last fact about robots? Well,
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about humans hijacking animals in the past,
Speaker 1: and we did this story a while back on how
Speaker 1: scientists could manipulate cockroaches, you know, to get them to
Speaker 1: move right or left with these I guess it was
Speaker 1: with electrical pulses and and we can actually do the
Speaker 1: same thing with beatles as well, yeah, I've seen that
Speaker 1: you can actually put a um tiny camera on a
Speaker 1: beetle now, which is pretty amazing, that's right, And so
Speaker 1: to think about how that might be used. You know,
Speaker 1: the advantage of a swarm of beetles oversay, like you
Speaker 1: know this army of drones is, is that the beatles
Speaker 1: are used to flying in bad weather, so they naturally
Speaker 1: know where to feed themselves, how to rest, and so
Speaker 1: because of that, you don't have to worry about solar
Speaker 1: panels not working or a battery that might run out,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're obviously super nimble, and they're just
Speaker 1: way more cost effective too. But the weirdest animal I've
Speaker 1: read about humans using to their advantage are turtles, which
Speaker 1: obviously nothing like beetles, and apparently scientists from Korea have
Speaker 1: created these parasitic robots that live on top of turtles
Speaker 1: and kind of like your tomato robot, it will actually
Speaker 1: feed the turtle snacks when they move in the right direction.
Speaker 1: So I totally get insects. It's creepy that you can
Speaker 1: turn them into cyborgs and control them, but you know,
Speaker 1: they can get anywhere. It makes sense. They can like
Speaker 1: fly and crawl wherever. But why do you want to
Speaker 1: control a turtle? Well, I mean the whole ideas that
Speaker 1: there are going to be disasters that happen from time
Speaker 1: to time. So but this like floods or spills or earthquakes,
Speaker 1: and we just can't get to these spots very fast.
Speaker 1: But if you hijack a turtle population in the area,
Speaker 1: or any animal really, and then you survey the land
Speaker 1: by using them as your rover, it actually becomes really beneficial.
Speaker 1: And unlike the bugs, which you have to outfit with cameras,
Speaker 1: if you're just dropping these parasite robots on land and
Speaker 1: they each find a turtle, right, it ends up being
Speaker 1: much more efficient. That's pretty crazy, Okay, So here's my
Speaker 1: last robot fact. In two thousand eight, a post STOC
Speaker 1: fellow at Hakkaido University wanted to figure out if robot
Speaker 1: comedians can make people laugh. So he had people read
Speaker 1: a bunch of text message jokes and then he had
Speaker 1: robots deliver those same jokes. So what happened? Where the
Speaker 1: where the robots actually funny? Yeah, I mean they were
Speaker 1: marginally funnier. On a scale of one to five. The
Speaker 1: text jokes scored a two point three, while the average
Speaker 1: robot comedian landed a two point eight. Oh that's not bad.
Speaker 1: I mean that's half a point more. It's pretty good. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: But then he evolved the robots to make them even
Speaker 1: funnier by adding fart noises. Of course, the combination of
Speaker 1: robots making jokes and fart noises drove the numbers even higher,
Speaker 1: and the moral was pretty easy to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: robot comedians can be funny, but gassy robot comedians are
Speaker 1: even funnier. That's some pretty good science, you know. I
Speaker 1: feel like we had some good facts here, but I
Speaker 1: feel like what you just closed with with some pretty
Speaker 1: solid science and the fact that even robots can figure
Speaker 1: out that fart noises are funny, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to give you the trophy today, Mango. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, well, and thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow