Meet the robot woman who lives in Brampton

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Thu, 2008-12-11 16:11

Doug

The 33-year-old inventor is chasing a dream - of building the perfect domestic companion. Working out of his parents' home in Brampton, Ont., he ranks as an underdog compared with the scores of large corporations, academics and other hobbyists around the world pursuing serious robotics.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081211.wrobot11/BNStory/Technology/home

There's so much wrong with this! But at the same time, it's still a major achievement. The combination of technical brilliance with the most retrograde sexism is truly stunning. The spin of this UK Sun article makes it even worse.

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Technology

Thu, 2008-12-11 18:28

Agent 204

I'd say that the Sun article has most of the retrograde sexism here, though I'd agree that there's an undercurrent of that in the actual project. What I found most interesting, though, was this:

Quote:
Domestic robots have yet to draw much interest in Canada, according to
David Wang, professor and robotics expert at the University of
Waterloo. Androids generate more interest in Japan, where there is more
pressing recognition of the needs of a large aging population, he says.

There's something fascinating, and at the same time unsettling, about this. On the one hand, the negatives of an aging population could indeed be mitigated by this; on the other hand it's hard not to feel a bit weird about the idea of seniors being farmed off to the robots so the young 'uns can ignore them.

Thu, 2008-12-11 20:27

Manitoba Girl

Agent 204 wrote:

on the other hand it's hard not to feel a bit weird about the idea of seniors being farmed off to the robots so the young 'uns can ignore them.

Unlike when those seniors placed their own kids in front of TVs so they could ignore them. What goes around...

Fri, 2008-12-12 19:06

Hoodeet

I thought the idea was that the robots would provide
assistance to old people in their own residence, so they wouldn't have
to move out of their familiar surroundings. That could work in
the near future, given the scarcity of caregivers and the increasing
number of older citizens.

But of course the nursing homes will probably start using them to cut staff.

Sat, 2008-12-13 11:55

Refuge

Manitoba Girl wrote:
Agent 204 wrote:

on the other hand it's hard not to feel a bit weird about the idea of seniors being farmed off to the robots so the young 'uns can ignore them.

Unlike when those seniors placed their own kids in front of TVs so they could ignore them. What goes around...

Brilliant Observation!

Sat, 2008-12-13 12:49

remind

Refuge wrote:
Manitoba Girl wrote:
Agent 204 wrote:

on the other hand it's hard not to feel a bit weird about the idea of seniors being farmed off to the robots so the young 'uns can ignore them.

Unlike when those seniors placed their own kids in front of TVs so they could ignore them. What goes around...

Brilliant Observation!

It was? Perhaps for those who are of small intellect and mean-spiritedness. As in fact, it is truly broadbrushing and hate filled sentiment.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

Sat, 2008-12-13 12:55

martin dufresne

Is someone looking into unionizing robots?If they can recognize people, assess their needs and read, the point that they aren't sentient seems to be dwindling away by the hour. (They're way past some teenagers I know...)

Sat, 2008-12-13 12:57

martin dufresne

What remind said. I don't watch TV but I know most children love to.

Blaming their "parents" - aren't mothers always blamed for not doing enough themselves? - is just reinforcing the societal oppression of a class of laborers we would rather pass judgment on than actually pay for their work and defend against "battling dads" and classist social work agencies.

Sat, 2008-12-13 13:58

Refuge

okay, upon reflectiom perhaps saying they put them in front of the TV to ignore them was a little to harsh.

However I enjoyed the karmactic qualities mentioned. You look the normalization of having one television per household member and other sorted electronic gadgets that take away from human interaction of people and possibly even the ability to think clearly ( Chomsky ) from the time children are in diapers. And now the very generation that introduced that to their children ( whether knowingly or unknowingly ) is now afraid their lives will be turned over to electronics and a lack of human contact.

To me it sounds like a good Twilight Zone episode.

Sun, 2008-12-14 22:20

#10

Papal Bull

I far prefer my Super Nintendo to most people. I have no qualms whatsoever with my parents having introduced me to such a jolly old chap, as the Super Nintendo. The Super Nintendo is a lovely grey box with attractive and richly purple power buttons. It also has stellar controllers that, when they came out, fit my hand perfectly and allowed me to enjoy worlds that were about 100% more creative, involving, and helpful to my imagination than most of the other crap people tossed my way when I was 8.

Oh, and Dungeons and Dragons. Because of that game I currently live in a sewer stealing wireless signals, rolling my D20. One day I intend to mount an epic siege against the Crap Dragon of Bloor St. Lo, what a mighty beast that one is...

Ah, how people deride the many different types of media and technological innovations.

However, this is a pretty cool robot! It is awesome to see that people continue to innovate without the need of a massive corporation like Honda, GM, or Sony behind them. This man is doing his work free of the constraints of a university, and given the short nature of the article and its lack of specifics, it seems that he is making some genuine progress. Now, if we can find some brilliant person to overcome the issues of uncanny valley with realistic androids then I can see such pieces of machinery being quite useful. However, I don't think that anthropomorphic robots are really going to be a big part of the future. They are expensive and silly. Sure, they give you some familiarity, but for the terms of function and cost-effectiveness, I imagine you'll be seeing something even less human looking than Wall-E (aka, Johnny 5).

Mon, 2008-12-15 09:24

#11

martin dufresne

"(. . .) electronic gadgets that take away from human interaction of people and possibly even the ability to think clearly(. . .).

I am not sure about that. I think discussions such as this one as human interaction of people. even if electronically mediatized, and more of it is happening than before. Sure beats trying to exchange a few words with a beer swiller in a discotheque with 120 dB pouring out of the speakers!

As for the possibility of thinking clearly, not everyone limits his or her intake to Saturday morning TV cartoons and solipsistic Youtube doodlings...

Mon, 2008-12-15 18:16

#12

Refuge

martin dufresne wrote:

As for the possibility of thinking clearly, not everyone limits his or her intake to Saturday morning TV cartoons and solipsistic Youtube doodlings...

Well, it is not only Saturday morning cartoons which stop people from thinking but instead distract them from reality.

Quote:

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Now the readers / posters on rabble / babble are an exception to this because this is a form of alternative media so I am not speaking to anyone here. Here we discuss isssues, get facts and information away from mass media and make connections.

Alot of people I know are caught up in movie stars lives, soap opera or prime time show plot lines and look at me like I am crazy when I speak of the activism that I do - I wouldn't have time for that they say.

Alot of people are to busy to look into what is actually happening (as the number of people who don't understand what is really going on with the policitics right now are proving, they just believe the propoganda that is put out there).

Because people are distracted through the television shows, movies etc I see a definite lack of human interaction.

I do see people who are not following this and are trying to think away from the mass media so that gives me hope but to deny that media does not affect others this way I think would be a mistake.

Mon, 2008-12-15 18:25

#13

Refuge

Papal Bull wrote:

Oh, and Dungeons and Dragons. Because of that game I currently live in a sewer stealing wireless signals, rolling my D20.

I think the D&D would count as alternative media.

I remember D&D being a very social event! And I had my lucky D20 that would roll critical about 40% of the time. But only when I was a Druid .

My Dungeon Master was also really good at incorporating current events into the plotlines of the stories so we got to fight the evils while restling with the implications of current situations, very difficult for the True Neutral

Tue, 2008-12-16 00:55

#14

martin dufresne

I hear you Refuge. But... I am not sure how to phrase it but I am ill at ease with "present company excluded" generalizations, the old Us-Them pattern. I think that the media and its constructions are part of reality. And communication about sports and stars and cars and TV personas is part of human interaction. I am not convinced it is more virtual or alienated than the interactions we try to have about "serious stuff", but even if it is, there is communication and human interaction around those water coolers while we read and hammer away at keyboards trying to convince shadow interlocutors about important issues.

Tue, 2008-12-16 07:37

#15

Tommy_Paine

I saw the feature on "Daily Planet". And noticed that the "android" was wired to a bank of not your everyday computers, and that it remained seated during the whole interview.

I don't envision this giving granny her enema anytime in anything but the distant future.

The advantage of a robot that moves, and therefore to some extent looks like a human, is that our everyday infrastructure doesn't have to be changed much in order for it to operate.

The real revolution in moving to something like an android will come when computers can store information in some of those rolled up, folded up dimensions we are told exists. This will enable much more sophisticated programming.

That is, until the primative beings that live in those rolled up and folded up dimensions start incorporating that information and learning from it, and take over our dimensions.

I have copyright on that plot line, so begger off.

Tue, 2008-12-16 08:21

#16

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Ah, TV snobs.... Look, television is 20% landmark and 80% landfill, as once described to me by a broadcasting executive. Much like the print industry -- harlequin romances, anyone? Sure to numb the mind as quickly and effectively as an episode of Survivor.

Some of us actually strive to make television that opens people's minds and eyes.

Back to the subject at hand: Domestic robots. Love the idea. Not necessarily to care for the elderly, but I have a robot vacuum and it makes my life more pleasant. I haven't had to sweep my dining room regularly in over a year - or is it two now? The dog and cat hair situation is much, much improved. Send the kids to school, start the Roomba, go to work, main floor is clean by lunch time.

I'm not so sure I'd want an andriod, but if it could do the dusting, dishes and the laundry...

Tue, 2008-12-16 08:40

#17

Tommy_Paine

Time to unleash the elephant in the room.

We all know it won't take off until they build one we can screw.

Crass, but true.

Tue, 2008-12-16 08:42

#18

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Well, that may be true for some... But around here, if someone else did more of the domestic chores, the blond guy and I might have more time for that sort of thing with each other!

Tue, 2008-12-16 09:00

#19

Tommy_Paine

Seriously, though, I think that's the way it will go. Porn was first and I think still the most profitable element of the internet.

And, I think there would be a market in both the male and female demographic, for as many reasons as there are people.

How would it come to be? I don't see some guy in his garage or parent's basement building one from scratch, rather someone pulling already existing technologies off the shelf and putting it all together. And I bet someone already has a primative prototype they are working on.

Of course, they will sell "non sexual" robots along side fully operational ones, so "nice" "normal" people can carry on the pretence that their robot is just a domestic servant -- only it looks just like Jessica Alba or Brad Pitt-- who profit nicely from allowing their image to be used in such a fashion.

And there will be a debate about the sociological effects of all this, just like the debate happened when the first preadolescent boy took a charred stick and drew a picture of a naked woman on a cave wall.

Will it further alienate people from actual human to human contact?

Well, it's the trend, isn't it?

Oh-- he he-- if you disagree with the last statement, please drop by my house and tell me.... don't use the computer......

Tue, 2008-12-16 09:14

#20

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Nice try, Tommy!

I don't entirely agree with you, or entirely disagree... I'm sure there will be a market for sexbots. Possibly (probably) a very lucrative one. But I also think that there will be a market for the more mundane clean-up robots and plenty of us wouldn't pay extra for one that looks like a movie star. Or even be human-shaped.

Tue, 2008-12-16 10:10

#21

Tommy_Paine

True, but we already have machines that do alot of mundane stuff. Washing machines, dryers, dishwashers-- but they require the discipline of putting stuff in them, and taking them out.

I never bought a dishwasher, as my ex often saw as a solution to our problem of getting our daughters to help out by doing the dishes, because I didn't see it as a mechanical problem. I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars, and time installing, and then repairing down the road just to transfer the topic of argument from doing the dishes manually to whose turn it was to fill, run, and empty the dishwasher.

Sophia.... sorry, the domestic sexbot... wouldn't need to be told to do much, it would just do it, and you wouldn't need to purchase any special ancilliary equipment. In fact, it would replace a number of such items.

The domestic robot isn't here to replace much in the way of machinery, though.

It's here to replace your discipline.

Tue, 2008-12-16 10:20

#22

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I have no room for a dishwasher - kitchen designed in 1912. The main thing my kitchen needs is a sledgehammer.

One of the few things the blond guy and I argue about is dishwashers. When we had one, it took about the same amount of time to rinse and load/unload as washing the dishes and putting them away. When it did get unloaded, that is. I started calling it the electric cupboard.

See, my problem is that, while I do have the discipline to put stuff in the mechanical devices and take them out again, I really hate doing it. If I had a 'bot that would do it for me, that would be just fine.

They still haven't invented a device to dust bookshelves. Or scrub toilets and bathtubs. Or clean the fridge -- I really hate cleaning the fridge. These things I would gladly delegate to an automaton. I'd prefer to apply my discipline to other things.

Tue, 2008-12-16 10:35

#23

Tommy_Paine

"I have no room for a dishwasher - kitchen designed in 1912. The main thing my kitchen needs is a sledgehammer."

Ha! you could be talking about our place.

Funny thing about cleaning the fridge. By the time you first notice it needs cleaning, it should have been done two weeks previously.

Sure, we'd like to use our discipline in less mundane chores and leave that to our curvaceous Sophia Loren edition sexbot, but what discipline would we have, if we haven't learned it from cleaning the fridge?

Tue, 2008-12-16 10:48

#24

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

I'd just as soon have R2D2 cleaning my fridge.... But there are many ways to gain discipline. Martial arts training is one, for me, or getting up at 6 to write even when I am tired and uninspired. Accounting - that's mundane, thankless and requires frequent reality checks and discipline to keep it up. Cleaning the fridge just leaves me resentful that the other sentients in the house don't take a turn at it, or phone it in when they do.

Tue, 2008-12-16 10:57

#25

Tommy_Paine

Yeah, but you enjoy martial arts training. Forcing yourself to do stuff you really don't enjoy, or want to, because is has to be done is real discipline.

Hmm. I wanted to just talk about the sexual aspect of robots, but I seem to have stumbled upon something a bit more profound.... curse you, Timebandit.....

Having delivered the moral about discipline, reminds me of how childishly undisciplined I actually am.

You know how many things I am avoiding right now, because I enjoy this more than cleaning up and doing other more important things? I have paper work to do, a basement needing cleaning, Christmas shopping, improving the efficiency of my house for the winter months......

Geez, Timebandit, way to ruin my morning......

Tue, 2008-12-16 11:03

#26

Timebandit Timebandit's picture

Well, I am dodging much of what you are, Tommy, and having a short time line on a rough cut tossed in the mix. However, I maintain that a good writer knows when to let the unconscious mind work on the problem by distracting oneself -- yeah, that's it. That's what I'm doing, here, not being undisciplined, no way, not me.....

Now if I could just get that pile of bills and accounting crap to stop looking at me like that......

Tue, 2008-12-16 11:31

#27

Tommy_Paine

"However, I maintain that a good writer knows when to let the unconscious mind work on the problem by distracting oneself"

Okay then, back to sexbots.

If we extrapolate the societal effects of having a robotic sexual partner, I can see certain things to be prepared for.

One, advertisers for beer commercials will have to come up with a new ruse to push beer on young males. They'll already have at home what the beer commercial promises if you drink their product, get a beer gut, become a drunken lout and be attractive to young blonde women.

I can see local humane societies becoming overwhelmed with cats, as single middle aged women suddenly lose interest in them.

"Rabble" will have a thread cellebrating the demise of the sexist sex trade. On the same day, they will have a thread on the sexist effects due to the lamented demise of the sex trade.

The Vatican will condemn the sexbot, but invest heavily in companies that make miniatures.

The first Cabinet Minister implicated in a sexbot related political scandle will be from Quebec.

Alberta will elect the first all robot provincial legislature... in 1971....

Wed, 2008-12-17 01:25

#28

Refuge

martin dufresne wrote:

I hear you Refuge. But... I am not sure how to phrase it but I am ill at ease with "present company excluded" generalizations, the old Us-Them pattern. I think that the media and its constructions are part of reality. And communication about sports and stars and cars and TV personas is part of human interaction. I am not convinced it is more virtual or alienated than the interactions we try to have about "serious stuff", but even if it is, there is communication and human interaction around those water coolers while we read and hammer away at keyboards trying to convince shadow interlocutors about important issues.

I don't think I make myself clear. I was merely talking about Babble / Rabble being different on the intention of the message not the human interaction.
On Distraction:
I meant one the intents of mass media ( which by definition does not include Babble ) is to distract people from taking action either through thought or deed. One of the Babble / Rabbles main intentions is that of all alternate media - to get people thinking, organized and actually doing something outside of what the system wants you to think ( see the Chomsky article quoted above for a definition of what I call the system ).
On the human interaction side:
I agree that human interaction Babble is not that much different through physical seperation. I don't believe I ever stated if I think that less ( physical ) human contact is good or bad. I guess it would depend on the situation. In this situation where contact is not physical but electronic I agree with your earlier post:

Quote:

I think discussions such as this one as human interaction of people. even if electronically mediatized, and more of it is happening than before. Sure beats trying to exchange a few words with a beer swiller in a discotheque with 120 dB pouring out of the speakers!