Rover's Just a Robot, but a Great Pal for All That
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/international/asia/22JAPA.html?ex=1007096400
&en=46641bca464a87e5&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
YAMATO, Japan - While several other children whipped up a commotion in a
hospital playroom here, one lone boy lingered in the entrance, too shy or too
frightened to take off his shoes and enter the fray.
That is until a hospital volunteer, a student from a nearby university,
beseeched one of several puppies playing on the wooden floor to raise its paw:
"Paw, Aibo. Paw." The dog raised a foot, and with that the boy's shoes were
off and he quickly lost himself in play.
Boys and dogs go back too far to reckon. But Aibo is no ordinary package of
flesh, fur and saliva. He is a robot, made instead of plastic, metal and
computer circuitry, and capable of deftly simulating emotions, of a wide range
of doglike behaviors - minus the growling and snapping - and of keeping a
roomful of children (and adults) absolutely rapt.
"Being hospitalized can be very stressful for children, and we are trying to
put them more at ease by using techniques like these," said Dr. Akimitsu
Yokoyama, a psychiatrist who runs the robot therapy program at Yamato
Municipal Hospital, one of several in Japan. "Children who are repeatedly
hospitalized must constantly make new friends. But for them to know that the
same Aibo they had befriended during their last visit will be there is very
comforting."
Few, if any, countries have adapted notions like automation and virtual
reality so widely or embraced them so fully as Japan, where animated films,
for example, are consistently the biggest hits.
People here have long taken artificial companionship for granted. From the
virtual care and feeding of digital toys like the egg-shaped Tamagotchi to the
computerized maps in cars that speak driving instructions and announce
landmarks, few Japanese are ever completely alone.
In fact, for those grown tired of the dating game, in one of the latest fads
spawned by the ever-present mobile phone, many men nowadays maintain
"relationships" with virtual girlfriends via cellular e-mail.
With the development of the Aibo, Sony, the maker of the $1,600 robot, is
merely pursuing a theme it first developed in 1979 with the first Walkman:
portable, mood-enhancing companionship. Just two years after the first Aibo
models went on sale, Sony, along with several Japanese competitors, is
predicting a future in which man's best friends will be mostly man-made.
"When we started we had no idea how many of these we could sell," said Satoshi
Amagai, president of Sony Entertainment Robot Company. "Most of all, we never
imagined how many people would have wanted this as a substitute pet. We test
marketed the first Aibo with only 5,000 units, imagining it as something that
would interest gadget and technology fans, but we ended up inventing the first
hi-touch category product line instead."
Mr. Amagai said that hi-touch meant "hi-tech things that provide a sense of
emotional attachment."
The Aibo has taken off in Japan, where the overwhelming majority of the
120,000 models has been sold, but tellingly has not sold well overseas.
Moreover, while most fancy new gadgets tend to be embraced first by the young,
the Aibo is most popular among lonely elderly people, a category that abounds
in Japan. Even for the gadgets' designers, these disparities suggest basic
differences in the willingness of Japanese versus Western consumers to embrace
technological companionship.
For Sony, though, this just means trying harder. Mr. Amagai said that future
Aibos would understand far more than the 75 words it can grasp at present, be
able to recognize people's faces and respond in kind, and relate to other
mechanical pets through wireless communication.
Sony's most prominent competitor in the race to develop robotic companions is
the automaker Honda. At a convention center in Yokohama the other day, Honda's
Asimo, the first production model of a new humanoid robot, held a large
audience in thrall, leading them through a nursery school rhymelike pantomime.
After its performance, the robot, which looks like a diminutive astronaut in a
space suit, found its own way to the stage exit with the jerky gait of a tipsy
salaryman, and turned around to bow and wave goodbye.
Honda eschews its rival's emotional approach, focusing on functionality. For
now, the Asimo, which roughly means two-legged mobility, is not sold, but
rather rented to companies to be used as a greeter at industrial shows and
other meetings. Company officials envision a day when household companions
will be sold that can fetch a beer or the newspaper, or even cook a meal.
"You don't need to physically move around for information anymore in the age
of the Internet," said Masato Hirose, the 45-year-old father of the Honda
robot. "But if you want to move objects physically, machines like Asimo will
be necessary."
But for now there is Aibo, whose part in Dr. Yokoyama's therapy sessions
represents the achievement of a robot-maker's dreams, and perhaps Japan's as
well. Is there any other country where a doctor would say, with the slightly
startling giggle of a tinkering scientist, "I know that real animals are even
better than robots, but by introducing Aibo into the hospital environment, I
hope to discover why."
"You'll learn to like robots. They'll be nicer than human beings."
--Hans Moravec
--- --- --- --- ---
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, Cyc, Eliza, cryonics, individual
uniqueness, ego, human values, scientific relinquishment, malevolent AI,
non-sensory experience
We move into a better future in proportion as science displaces superstition.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:21 MDT