What's it like to be a robot? | Leila Takayama
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2018
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
We already live among robots: tools and machines like dishwashers and thermostats so integrated into our lives that we'd never think to call them that. What will a future with even more robots look like? Social scientist Leila Takayama shares some unique challenges of designing for human-robot interactions -- and how experimenting with robotic futures actually leads us to a better understanding of ourselves.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features cognitive and social scientist Leila Takayama, recorded live at TEDx Palo Alto, 2017. |
| 0:10.3 | You only get one chance to make a first impression, and that's true if you're a robot as well as if you're a person. |
| 0:16.4 | And the first time that I met one of these robots was at a place called Willow Garage in 2008. |
| 0:22.6 | And when I went to visit there, my host walked me into the building, and we met this little guy. |
| 0:27.0 | He was rolling into the hallway, came up to me, sat there, stared blankly past me, did nothing for a while, rapidly spun his head around 108 degrees, and then ran away. |
| 0:39.2 | And that was not a great first impression. The thing that I learned about robots that day is that, you know, they |
| 0:43.5 | kind of do their own thing and they're not totally aware of us. And I think as we're experimenting |
| 0:48.0 | with these possible robot futures, we actually end up learning a lot more about ourselves |
| 0:52.6 | as opposed to just these machines. |
| 0:54.5 | And what I learned that day was that I had pretty high expectations for this little dude, right? |
| 0:59.3 | He was not only supposed to be able to navigate the physical world, but also be able to navigate |
| 1:03.9 | my social world. He's in my space. It's a personal robot. Why didn't it understand me? |
| 1:09.4 | My host explained to me that, well, the robot's trying |
| 1:11.8 | to get from point A to point B, and you were an obstacle in his way, so he had to re-plan his path, |
| 1:17.9 | figure out where to go, and then get there some other way, which was actually not a very efficient |
| 1:22.6 | thing to know. If that robot had figured out that I was a person, not a chair, and that I was willing to get out of |
| 1:28.1 | its way, if it was trying to get somewhere, then it actually would have been more efficient at |
| 1:32.1 | getting its job done if it had bothered to notice that I was a human and that I have different |
| 1:36.7 | affordances than things like chairs and walls do. You know, we tend to think of these robots as |
| 1:41.2 | being from outer space and from the future and from science |
| 1:44.2 | fiction. And while that could be true, I'd actually like to argue that robots are here today |
| 1:49.2 | and they live and work amongst us right now. These are two robots that live in my home. They vacuum |
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