Anthropomorphization Turns Evil Appliances Into Friendly Robots

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 23 of March , 2009 at 4:41 am

[ Direct Link to Video (*.wmv) ]

I know some of the things in this video are kinda goofy looking, with the googly eyes and the Disney gloves. But bear with me, it’s really pretty cool. Robots are all around us: microwaves are robots, and so are printers and paper shredders. We don’t think of them as robots, because they don’t interact with us on a level that we really associate with, and that makes using appliances an isolating experience, especially if they’re unfamiliar or confusing. But, if you give them eyes and hands and a voice, magically they turn into your new happy friendly robot buddy.

Why would I want my microwave or my printer to be able to talk to me? Well, easy: I don’t want to have to read the manual. Manuals suck. I want my printer to know what I want and just do it, and if I need to provide input, it should tell me what input it needs, and if it has a problem, it should tell me how to fix it instead of some meaningless technical jargon like “PC LOAD LETTER.” Seriously, WTF does that mean? It makes much more sense to just give the printer the ability to physically point out problems and explain how to fix them, and the possibilities with this kind of thing are endless: “oops, I just burned your popcorn!” Or, “hey, pull that paper jam out of my ass!” Or, “yeah baby, I’m gonna shred that paper, stick it in me nice and slooowww…”

Like I said, endless. And I’d just like to add that having a paper shredder that makes happy faces when you stroke it would be just about the best thing ever.

VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

Comments (3)

Category: Artificial Intelligence, Consumer, Research

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3 Comments

Comment by Joey1058

Made Monday, 23 of March , 2009 at 11:41 am

The concept is sound, but the test models are just a little bit creepy. Perhaps a large interactive screen with a simple face to maintain your attention. Or a complete animated character. A camera for face recognition is essential! Unless the arms have the strength to put the item into the nuker itself, or take the paper from you, why bother with arms?

Comment by Norri Kageki

Made Tuesday, 24 of March , 2009 at 10:20 am

http://www.botjunkie.com/2009/03/23/anthropomorphization-turns-evil-appliances-into-friendly-robots/

Hi Evan,

Thanks for picking up my story from Robot Watch.
But I wanted to ask you to take off the video from YouTube.
There are many people holding the copyright for this video and I went through a lot of work to get permission to use it on Robot Watch.

Please do this as soon as possible.

Thank you very much in advance.

Norri Kageki

Comment by Evan Ackerman

Made Tuesday, 24 of March , 2009 at 3:24 pm

Done. My apologies for any issues this may have caused, just trying to make it more accessible to people.