How do you make a robot that people will actually want to use? That is, a robot that they understand without having to take a three-day training course, that they put to real work, that doesn’t give them the willies?
One answer is, give it the shape of a person, with arms and legs and a head. Let it slip right in to a world made for people. That’s the humanoid-robot idea, which has been getting a lot of press this year, including here.
Leila Takayama takes a different approach: Robots don’t need to imitate us. They can imitate our tools. That way, they can be smart and capable yet unassuming, unremarkable, unthreatening — and that will make them welcome. This kind of robot won’t frighten or confuse people. And they’ll know how to use it, from their experience of the ordinary tools that it resembles.
Takayama is Vice President of Human-Robot Interaction and Design at Robust.AI, the five-year-old startup that makes Carter, a warehouse robot. Compared to a backflipping humanoid, Carter is not much to look at, but it’s smart and adaptable. And its capacities are wrapped in the form of a familiar, unthreatening tool: A cart.
Takayama and I talked about the many skills of supposedly “unskilled” workers, the subtle tweaks that turn a robot from scary to welcome, how the best robots may be the ones that hide in plain sight — and a lot of other interesting things. Give a listen!
The Best Robot? One You Don't Notice