Could Your Best Friend Be A Robot?

Maybe they already are. JL 

Mariya Yao comments in Forbes:

Chatbots will eventually replace apps in ubiquity and usefulness, the next step in the materialization of robot companions. Robots are designed by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, animators, designers, and storytellers who are masters at developing characters who elicit strong emotions. These robots will not be mere algorithms, but realized and mechanized A.I. capable of moving us on an emotional level the same way pets do.

Robots captured the hearts of children long before they stirred the imagination of Silicon Valley. From the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz to R2D2 in Star Wars, these adorable heaps of metal brim with personality and innocent mischief. No wonder they’re often children’s favorite imaginary friends.
But unlike other imaginary friends, friendly robot companions are no longer fiction. Technology pioneers in robotics, artificial intelligence, and character design have turned childhood fantasies into reality. Not surprisingly, social robots charmed everyone who attended this year’s CES event in Las Vegas. Smart automatons came in an astounding array of shapes and sizes, including a robot named Einstein that tutors your children in physics, a robot named Mykie that helps your family cook up tasty recipes, and a robot named Buddy that acts as a trusted family companion.
There was even a spherical robot named Leka, specially designed to help autistic children learn and socialize. When a child gets a task performed with Leka right, “the robot reacts emotionally,” flashing happy facial expressions, says CEO Ladislas de Toldi. “The kids love it.”Two of the leading social robotics companies are Jibo and Anki, which have raised $85 million and $157.5 million respectively to date. Jibo’s co-founder and chief scientist, Cynthia Breazeal, believes that technology should “prioritize the unique needs of a human being” by having a highly interactive and “empathetic presence.” Jibo has all the basic functionality of a smart home device (like an Amazon Echo, for instance), but the robot “recognizes who you are based on your face and voice and starts to learn your interests,” explains Jibo CEO Steve Chambers. “If Jibo knows I like tennis, he might display a spinning tennis ball as a virtual gift, remind me of a friend who also likes tennis, or even ping a news database for tennis news.”
Anki’s founders Boris Sofman, Mark Palatucci, and Hanns Tappeiner built their robotics expertise at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. Their hit robot toy, Cozmo, looks like a “Pixar robot come to life” in the words of President Hanns Tappeiner. Cozmo recognizes human faces and remembers your name. Just like WALL-E, he loves stacking cubes and playing games with you. If you beat him too many times in a row, he’ll make disgruntled noises, scowl at you, and might even flip a cube in anger.
Cozmo is a WALL-E like robot with rich expressions and a love of games.

You fall in love with Hollywood robots like R2D2 or WALL-E for a reason. Robots in movies are meticulously designed and rendered by an interdisciplinary team of engineers, animators, designers, and storytellers who are masters at developing characters who elicit strong emotions from you, while most physical robots are developed solely by engineers and have underdeveloped characters. That’s why Anki hired ex-Pixar experts to develop the character A.I. and behavior of Cozmo.
Jibo employed a similar strategy. According to CEO Steve Chambers, the company hired the audio engineer behind R2D2 to design Jibo’s sound effects to “seem and sound like a 9 year old boy.” The robot greets you excitedly when you enter the room, asks questions about objects in its environment, and sometimes entreats you to co-create a story. Chambers shares that in beta testing, the robot provoked such strong emotional reactions that children cried when their robot was taken away. One young woman even got upset when Jibo waved at her boyfriend but never did so for her.
Cozmo elicits similar emotional reactions. One of Anki President Tappeiner’s favorite stories involves two sisters who kept beating the robot at games during playtests. “When Cozmo became visibly upset after losing so many games, one of the girls suggested to the other that they let him win a game so he doesn’t become sadder,” he shares. “This, to me, means we’ve succeeded.”
Anki’s team also leveraged social research to ensure you feel connected to Cozmo. In an early design, the robot would only make eye contact with you rarely, making playtesters report that he felt “like a turtle or a hamster,” reveals Tappeiner. His team found research showing that toddlers typically make eye contact with you every 8-12 seconds. Once they modeled Cozmo’s behaviors after lively children, people immediately felt more emotionally attached to him.
Building such involved social features into moving robots makes the development and manufacturing process far more challenging compared to typical smarthome devices. The engineers behind Leka found that off-the-shelf motors were either too loud or too weak to power their rolling spherical robot, so they designed and manufactured their own custom motors in a process that required 4 extra months. Similarly, Jibo has been delayed for over a year due to technical challenges like wifi incompatibility and network latency.
In the years ahead, social robots will likely join our friends and family in tight circles of companionship. With many industry experts predicting that chatbots will eventually replace apps in ubiquity and usefulness, the next step in the journey is the materialization of robot companions. These robots will not be mere algorithms stored in the cloud, but realized and mechanized A.I. capable of moving us on an emotional level the same way our beloved pets do. The prospect is both fascinating and disturbing, but for the young and curious, the time has come to plug and play.