Our cohabitation with robotic servants is pretty much guaranteed. So what are we doing today to make sure these are the sort of robot we can tolerate? In this episode, Julie and Robert discuss how our robotic caretakers are shaping up.
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And we just finished talking about old people in robots a little bit in our last Living with Robots podcast, because as we discussed there, we're looking at a future full of old people. I mean we will probably we're going to be some of those old people properly and uh, and somebody's gonna have to look after them, after them, and they're gonna be fewer young people to take care of all these old people. Young people will be busy doing their stuff and you know, going into space and all that, and they're gonna leave this this planet. Are you saying they're the young people are going in the generation ship and they're leaving off the old people behind. Yeah, we'll have an oldie planet. I mean it'll be very peaceful, lots of parks, lots of feeding scorel maybe maybe because as we discussed in the last podcast, it could be a bunch of rotting, uh, senior citizens with their exo skeletons just skating right past you. You don't even you don't know well, In this podcast, we're gonna explore this topic a little a little closer, um, and a little deeper and really get down into the nitty gritty of our all Right, So we we want robots to help take care of the elderly, or we want them to take care of the elderly entirely. UM, let's start hashing out some designs because, needless to say, you're common assembly line robot is incapable of caring for Grandma. I mean it there's a you go you you see like an assembly line robot. It's gonna have barriers up around it because it cannot work safely next to humans. And what we're talking about here is is is a much I mean, it's very far removed from that concept because it has to be able to work around people without killing them. Not only that, it has to be able to do things like help a fragile individual with daily tasks such as you know, get getting in and out of the bathtub, using the restroom, helping them feed them, helping them to know what kind of medication to take in any given time, and anticipate their needs. That's huge, and do all this while moving around in a human environment and potentially feeding off of of human you know, these human cues and human emotional cues. I mean, how hard is it to understand what's going on in the mind of of of the average person around you. Um, it's fairly difficult. But but could we make a robot that could possibly at least get some of those the subtle clues? Well if they're trying, right, right, And that's that's what we're gonna talk about today. Can we build a better bot? And you know, what are some of the challenges? Um? And and right now, I mean again, let's just talk about the aging population again real quick. Particularly in Japan. It's called the gray Yen. Um. It is called that because it's providing a growing market in Japan for these services. The Gray Yan almost of the population is over the age of sixty five. And they can also this is the other note to this, they can also afford a bit more. The jet black Yen buys a lot of toys though, and electronic gadgets, yes, yes. And the Sterling it just means you get to hang out with Richard Branson on one of his shuttle flights. It's called the Gray Yen Shuttle flight Sterling. Alright, I like this. I like this. The economy of the nation as divided up into hair colors. Oh, I was thinking it was. I was thinking it was more like the American Express card, like the platinum and the red yen is is really adventurous? Not going right? That dyed red hair. Yes, yeah, they're all loose watch out with excess skeletons and the red yen. Yeah. And then there's I guess the blonde yin because you have the what there's a particular fad in Japan where the women dress up like like dolls. Why is this saluting me? Um? It's not. Is it part of kawaii? It factors into kauai. But there's a there's this, yes, and then there's a Lolita noir where they dressed up like dark Lolita's. And there's a whole other by the way, there's a whole they're like underground economy with the Lolita girls. By the way, an older men, but we won't talk about that today. Uh, getting back on track. Um, so yeah, we're talking about you know this, this aging population of old men looking for Lolita's. Um and just again to put this in more context, by four out of ten, Japanese will be classified as elderly. Okay, So it makes sense that they're the ones that are really going after this this problem of aging really um. And in fact there's just so you know how they've been preparing. There's actually a Tokyo based company called prop that has created air bags for the elderly. Yes, you send me the link to this, and it's it's pretty fascinating because it's kind of exactly what it sounds like. It's like this kind of robotic harness that you wear, and it had as these air bags that will sort of shoot up around the head and around the hips because these are of course the most vulnerable areas of the old body. Um, you don't want to hit your head, damns the brain, you don't want to hit the hips. Very difficult to deal with, you. So these are cushions that pop up. They weigh two and a half pounds each enter tied around the waist and then they're activated by electric sensors that can feel a sudden change in movement as soon as the alarm goes off. Fifteen liters of compressed air inject into these inflatable pads, puff them up and then ideally when you fall backwards, and you can only fall backwards this right, by the way, never pitch forward. Right. Well, I guess it's kind of like in um to bring up pro wrestling again. Like a lot of those guys like they trained to take bumps and they try they generally you want to bump right on your back. And I've I've heard some of these guys talk about like they trained so this locker room talk. No, well, I don't go to locker rooms, but room the bump, bump on your back? What does that mean? To take a bump is to fall Like any time in a wrestling mat, for see a guy like take a punch or a slam and he hits the canvas, He's taking a bump, okay, And so they trained for this just to to take the bump in an optimal fashion so that it doesn't really do much damage. I mean, it will do a lot of damage over time perhaps, but generally you want to fall flat on your back and take this flat bump on your back. And I've heard some of these guys talk about to where they're they're trained to such a point that if they were to slip on milk in the grocery store, they would take up a back bump because you don't want to fall on your side or could be a useful skill. Right. So I'm thinking you just need to train up the elderly. I think the elderly professional wrestlers in Japan will will be the really be the ones to try this out. Yeah, I'm just thinking about whole Kogan, like, you know, uh, carrying out these workshops for the elderly. Yeah. But you know, here's the thing though, too, that that's so cool about these airbags is that they can inflate in point one second, the time it takes for an old person to topple. Yeah. Um, so actually that's really helpful. I mean if you're going to fall backward right um. And then there are partner robots that toyota Is has been creating and getting into the game of offering assistance for the elderly and the disabled. Yeah. In fact, this is just like we're recording this what this is the second week in November the first I really can't keep track of this, okay, and and I have no idea when it's actually publishing, like the third or fourth week. Yeah, for you, it's like Halloween and then nothing else right, I'm getting it. Yeah, after Halloween is just this busy mess of holidays. Yeah, visits and trips and da da dada. Yeah. But um but but anyway, so that this first week of November actually a two thousand eleven Toyota Motor Corporation in Toyota City in Japan. I somehow was not aware that they Toyota had its own city in Japan. It's pretty um they were. They were really launching forward with this idea that Toyota is really concerned about about working on these bots, making a making a priority and partner bots are a big deal, and and and not just in nursing and healthcare, but also in personal transport, manufacturing, domestic duties like this all goes into the idea of if we are going to develop a future of work where robots are doing work for us, we want to develop robots that can learn tasks alongside humans and then eventually do them on their own. Can you get that peanut butter for me? Right? So, so, like the first logical step, well maybe not the first, but one of the first logical steps definitely a stopover on the way to this future is the reality of helper bots. A bot that's going to help a human with various tasks. So you end up with basically like four different areas that that are essential as laid out by Toyota. One independent walk assist all right, and this is the idea of just supporting independent walking for people whose ability has been impaired. UM. So these are sort of like you fit your legs into this device, yes, and it will actually help you. It's it's kind of has some sort of nomadic device in it, but it will help you actually get upstairs, walk around. Yeah, it's like an exosuth skeleton, or at least a limited exo skeleton. Um. No nanocarbon tubes in it. Strength, No like super Terminator power armor with with power axes and all that. But but but still you know it's it's the the the idea is that say the legs are weak or inoperable, but the exo skeleton around them can help do the walking or do the walking for them. Um. While training assists this is uh, this is a similar Balanced training assists. This is like robots developed to support balance function training with people with impaired balance. So it's think a combination of a two wheeled self balancing type deal with game elements aimed at making this kind of training enjoyable, right, So I mean that would be actually really helpful if you're if you're going through physical therapy as well, right, we're trying to regain and also bear in mind you're like gaming old people. But come on, we're talking about a lot. We're talking in a large part about today's uh, young or middle aged people, many of whom are gamers especially. You know, Japan has a big gaming culture as well. So imagine in the future, Yeah, there's gonna be Gamification of physical therapy is just a no brainer. Right. So right now there would be like a bingo program, right, but in the future it would be like, uh, I don't know what like World of Warcraft for for our generation, yeah, or whatever, these retro games whatever is big in Japan. I don't know, the World of Warcraft is big in Japan. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like we're like Futson around in our sunset years will be like, oh, let me just program this World Warcraft and and think about those great fuzzy memories of playing in my yester year yeah years. Uh. And then the fourth area is patient Transfer assist and this is really I found this would be the most exciting. And this is the the idea that a lot of caring for not only the elderly, but anyone who, like, even people were just really sick before hospital for various things. A lot of the caregiving comes down to moving the patient around. Yeah, and it's physically demanding forge because yeah, because you're having to move. Just if you're moving a person, say they're not even particularly fragile, they don't have anything particularly wrong with them, you're still talking about moving a sizeable person from say their bad to a bathtub, from their bed to a toilet, moving them around just enough to even uh uh you know, to bathe them with a sponge bath or or or administer or bed pan type situation, or just to prevent bed sores and really immobile people. Um. The idea is that you have a robot with like a weight supporting arm that actually helps out. And some some really cool pictures of this um also surfaced from this Toyota event. And and then they're they're really cool because and I'm not I mean, they're also easy to kind of make fun of because it's like it's a robot helping a dude set on a toilet while a nurse helps. But but the thing is, like, if you put yourself in the in the mindset of that dude or that nurse, like this is awesome because suddenly you have a situation where only one nurse has to help this guy go to the bathroom, which is great for the nurses, great for the guy, and eventually could lead to the situation where this dude can have assistance using the restroom. Um, you know, the very private act that none of us want help with. I mean, most of us don't want We don't want help with it unless we're we're very young or very weird. We don't judge fetish. Okay, all right, right, if you like help going to the bathroom, that's great. But and if you but if you, but the idea is if the robot is helping you, then every I think more people can get into the idea. And independence two, which is a really important um you know when you're aging and um And again importantly, also if you're staffing a hospital to care for older people, the idea that one person or even zero actual humans are having to help with this task and they can therefore apply their skills elsewhere well, you know that I that I love potty humor and um, so of course when you showed me the video, I was going to react to it. But it wasn't just because the guy was being you know, I was sitting on the toilet with assistance. It was that he was wearing like like we're jogging pants, like you know, the ones that are really tight, and they were black and shiny, and then as you described, like this this sort of prison yellow and white striped shirt and pants over that. Well, yeah, well Toyota didn't want to actually bring a guy in stage and have a robot with pants down. I appreciate that. It was just really distracting because I was like, I don't get it. Is he going to go running after this? Is he in prison both? I don't know. Yeah, well they could have gone more in the direction of the fire toilet. Remember the gator, that's that's what's coming home. Yeah. Yeah, but you're right. This was just in case anybody's never seen this, you can go onto YouTube and see this and uh, there is a woman that is using a toilet. It that is uh, it's the fire toilet, right is Yeah, it's basically a fire toilet. It's gas powered or gas powered flames down there that incinerate the the waste product that the one produces on the toilet. And again, this is fine, this is great, it's actually using navy ships. But again I take issue with the aesthetics of it because the woman, uh, she starts this video and she's got like, I don't know, maybe like a hundred keys on a ring, So you're kind of like, what's the deal, why do you have a hundred keys? And then she's got you know, maybe some sort of like Eastern block accent. Fine, but it just sort of adds to this ap like there's no nudity in it, but she's like visibly she's obviously dropping pants. She's not wearing some sort of black garment underneath. And and then there's actual flaming poosh shown, the flaming poush shown. They cut to a shot of her with all you know, her pants DOWMP, but then she's taken her boots and her socks off. It's all very It just gets weirder and weirder the longer this video goes on, a little bit like this podcast right now, well, you can go weird either way with with um with some sort of toilet technology demo, and that is to either go realistic or go um with a black body suit underneath your clothing. Yeah yeah, so okay, I got my attention. Nonetheless, so let's let's talk nuts and bolts about this too. Like, you know what, when we're talking about building a better boty and we're really thinking about it more as you know, we're gonna anthropomorphise it and think about it as us. Right, this is this version of ourselves. What are we thinking about? Well, one of the big things is sensitivity to the environment that the robot is working in and um on one level, that involves just being able to move through it, being able to navigate it, but also being able to just think of your sense of touch. Um. Like. The best example of this for me would be astronaut gloves. Like, one of the big issues with astronaut gloves has been you you put these guys up in space and they're gonna be working on something really delicate, but they can't just take their gloves off and work with their bare hands. Obviously, they have to wear gloves, and you cannot wear normal gloves, especially normal big thick gloves or space without losing a certain amount of sensitivity. Now, with a robot you're building, you're just building it all up from the bottom up. So like where do you where do you put the sensors on the on the feelers or on the body itself? Uh? Could you give it a skin that enables it to feel all over like a person? Right, so if it bumped into you, it would know, It would know if you bumped into it. And I also just think of manipulation, Like even just imagine that the robot just had the feeling of a human hand on its manipulators. It would enable it to be far more delicate with something. Uh. And in this case, it would be handling delicate things. It would be handling us sponge bath for instance. Right, you don't want something that's just a big metal um claw on the end of a of an arm. You want something that has a certain amount of sensitivity to it. Right, you don't want to get bashed over the head with a bar of soap. Yeah. Um. So yeah, there's this thing called robot skin. And this says this is from a Fast Companies article. Robot skin can feel touched, sense chemicals, and soak up solar power. It says, what we're talking about is a super intelligent skin designed by Stanford University researcher. It's solar powered and when the skin is subjected to pressure, the current flowing through the embedded transistors is modified as tiny pyramid shapes molded into the polymer layer compress, resulting in a super sensitive transducer that can apparently detect the pressure from a house flies feet So cool criss cross nanimator scale wires talk with a thin rubber sheet. I like it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just think that it's it's an amazing technology in and of itself. And of course they think that too, because it's not just for androids all that that's what was intended for um, they can also use it to coat cars or military vehicles or even soldiers uniforms could act as biosensors and solar power generators. And also think of the possibilities for prosthetics. Yeah, and again for um, for astronaut gloves or or even like forget the astronaut, for um, like a robotic exploring probe where a person could say, put on a pair of a pair of gloves on Earth and feel with the very human tactile response. Uh An object on another planet, right, and try to describe that in the texture of it and so on and so forth. Um, of course I can't help but think that it's going to be used on Roxy the robot. This is the sex spot. Yeah, but that's on the market right now. Yeah, but that's in the words of of Arkin, the professor. Arkin, that's a bad robot. That's just not like a very good robot. I know, but it's something that could sor But I don't see Roxy getting the kind of funding where she can benefit from this kind of Seah. They're going to have to do something about that tinny voice first. Yeah, you know it says things like that gets me hot. Well, well you bring up Roxy. As I recall, Roxy was originally a nursing project and then they decided that they wanted to make some fast cash on it. Yeah, that's how all innovation seems to be generated these days. But let's talk about let's talk about this thing called the jazz robot and mirror neurons, because this is really important, um, in terms of how we communicate with one another, right, Yeah, and this comes down to it again. We're talking about you want to robot that can live in a human environment, which is not just dealing with a human space in a safe way, but also dealing with the presence of humans and being able to read them and uh and so this this is something that just comes naturally to humans because we have we we grow up around other humans, most humans anyway. Um, we we have this theory of mind. And anytime you're encountering somebody, you're you're picking up in so many different things. You're picking up on on what they're saying, their tone there there, what their eyes are doing, what their hands are doing, what they're you know, their basic expression, their body language, all these different factories because you're trying to get into their head, right, which inadvertently allows you to empathize with another person. Right, yeah, right, And so like if you smile, than then you know, somewhere in my muscles I start to smile back, and I started to start to send these signals to my brain that this is funny or we're having fun or or something along those lines, right, And that's how that's how we communicate with one another, right, We we read so many different signals. So could you could you create a robot create more to the point, could you create an artificial intelligence, so it's capable of quickly analyzing all that data and at least getting some somewhats of what the mood is because uh, and imagine in a nursing environment. Uh, this would in theory enable a robot to tell if an individual was having some sort of an episode, if they were they were distraught over something, if they were in pain. Uh. I mean, especially with I'm thinking of like Alzheimer's patients. Uh, you know, off hand, because a lot of times these are people who aren't in a condition anymore to really express what they're feelings, you know, so you really need a human to be able to check on them. But if the human is not immediately available, then it would be nice to have a robot that would be able to say, oh, well, this person is experiencing some degree of pain. Um, we need to get somebody here to check on them, right, right. And so this is the the idea of this Jazz robot, which is by the way funded by the European Union because they've got some interest in this right into creating this technology to help the population as a whole. And it is um it's predicated on the notion of mirror neurons, right, it's trying to use the same sort of circuitry model, okay, and the way that the robot can predict behavior. So it's actually trying to analyze the person's behavior and figure out when there's been an error. Of course, when we talk about UM, you know the more complex things like checking in on a person and seeing if they're emotionally okay, this is not something that the robot can do quite yet, but these are the first steps. And so, for instance, the robots were programmed to help a person assemble a complicated toy UM. These robots could analyze the person's actions as a person worked on the assemblage and then offer suggestions by locating the proper tool to complete the assembly. So at this point it's more like a helper a partner robot, which I think is really interesting by the way, the semantics of that a partner robot UM. But it's not necessarily something that can be like, hey, how are you feeling today? You know, would you like some soup? It's cold outside? But maybe I mean these again, these are the first steps to try and to get robots to be able to deal with the complex machines that we are right, of course, this would make us want to dress up our robots, right well, yeah, and you can already dress up your household robots to certain degree. You can buy these, uh like furry covers to put over your yea, And we're going to talk about that and a bit right after this. This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions. So we're dressing up our robe, yes, putting furry costumes in our room bas so that they look like circular mice or something I don't know, with faces on top. Maybe we just want them to you know, buddy up to the cat more. I don't know, Yeah, a little friend for the cat. Let's not forget the pets out there, right And and there is the you know, the whole idea. Do you want to make the to make it more the ro about more relatable? A do we make it look more human and be does the the operator, the owner or the beneficiary of its service have some input into how it dresses well, Okay, so the Swedish Institute of Computer Science has actually been studying how much we have the ability to anthropomorphize robots by dressing up some off the shelf bots they are available right now, which I think is funny. Right, So they're taking um, you know, something like the pleio the pet dinosaur, and they've been giving or that actually have been programming it so that you know, if you if you change the outfit, it will actually act differently accordingly to how you dress up your your pet dinosaur. So also, you know, just keep in mind that the that pleo is able to learn as you play, and uh so you know, you can manipulate its behavior a bit. So if you give Cleo a special watchdog necklace, the robot remains active and on guard and putting you know, air quotes on on guard. You can change the costume from um that necklace to pajamas and the robot would slowly switch into sleep mode. The costumes or accessors you choose communicate electronically with robots program and just behavior follows suit. Okay, so these are just a couple of things that you can do. And they've also experimented with the roomba, which I think is really interesting. They have these patches that they put on the roomba and again it will behave accordingly to to whatever this patch is displaying. So they've got a patch that can make the ruma seem aggressive or curious or shy. It'll actually like hide under the sofa. And the whole idea is that robots can seem more natural like these are the first steps again to trying to you know, make us feel a little bit more comfortable with robots in our atmosphere and too, and to study how we behave and how we really project our feelings onto these inanimate objects. And as we discussed in the last podcasts, sometimes that is people just taking out their aggressions on the robots. Yes, yeah, yeah, And again I think that this is also in conjunction with lyric program, which is the living with Robots program that we talked about before. Robot House. Robot House. Yeah again, that a great reality series just you know, waiting to be made. Well if this leads us in inevitably to the Uncanny Valley and discussion of the Uncanny Valley um, This term, of course, is thrown around a lot, especially in terms of Hollywood animated films, video games. We we've all seen it before. You're they're trying to create a lifelike semblance of a human being saying, you know, a cut scene in a game or or what was it the Polar Express movie with Tom Hanks? Oh yeah, which apparently that was just a tragedy, a huge mistake, right because everybody or most people know who Tom Hanks is very warm and engaging person, right at least that's the perstpona that comes off, and all of a sudden you have a dead eyed Tom Hanks and it's very wearing his face or something. Yeah, yes, yes, leather face in a Christmas tail. Yeah, it's uh. This this all goes back to the paper in the journal Energy where roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed that robots that are too human light can veer into unsettling territory and basically to get real like number centric about it, Um, you can make a robot up to realistic theory, says and it's great, like, oh, this robot is looks like a person. That's amazing, that's awesome. But then once you hit that the like the the the space between and a human look is just creepy that's the that's the theory. That's the theory. And the theory is that on a psychological level of minds are perceiving the robot human effects similar as as dead right or an unhealthy human or you know, on some I guess primal level, like it's decaying, it's not alive, and so we back away. Again. This is the theory. There's so there's some disagreements on it. I mean, especially when you get outside of its applications in entertainment and really start looking at robotics again where where the term was originally um, you know, discussed and there there's some studies that have found that that really it's more about the mismatch. It's about it has really cool looking skin scan looks very human, but they the eyes are obviously mechanical, are too big and so they're not matching up to the rest of your expectation, and that's what's unsettling. There's a there's an interesting book called The wind Up Girl. I think I may mention it before Sci Fi book tied for Hugo Award last year, I think and uh. The title character, the wind Up Girl, is an artificial human that is created by Japanese scientists, and this is in the future and all. But they end up programming um they call him heard the wind wind up girl, or they call them wind up girls because they have programmed in and um it kind of wind up movement to their bodies that they can't quite control. Oh so they don't have smooth motor coordinations, right, because they didn't want them to look too human. They wanted to keep the uncanny valley um in place to a certain degree so that they would be marked. Uh uh okay. So this is sort of like the whole problem in Blade Runner with replicants, right, figure out which is a replicant? Yeah, who's the human? Who's They said, instead of giving it a complicated test about a turtle on offense post to bring the whole empathy thing into play, let's just watch him walk down the street and you'll be able to tell right away. Um. So, So anyway, there's the one idea that it's a mismatch. It's like, oh, it looks like a person, but it's moving weird uncanny valley um. But then there have been some other recent studies, like there was one study by Carl McDorman, director of Android Science Center at Indiana University, and uh, he found that the uncanny effects seemed to be tied to gender. They found that they yeah, they rolled out some various robots and uh, and they found that women subjects were sympathetic to UM the the to the requests of the robot um, whether they were represented as a person or poorly poorly rendered computer animation. Okay, this is this the scenario where they're they're acting at this role as doctor and these are patients. So one is a human patient on one is UM a computer value. Well that's right, they're not really robots, but it's you know, it's the idea of here's here's a person, here's a facsimile of a person UM, and then let's see how they respond to it. And the men sided with the real patient, but not the uncanny computer generated one, where the women were far more likely to side with the sympathetic one because they had empathy across the board, right, which interesting enough, I think ties in nicely something we discussed in the one of our early episodes about a year ago. Uh, the idea that in the future the human race will be composed entirely of women in their robotic partners that's right, ready to talk about that, yes, Uh, and for for many, many many reasons. Uh, this is not actually probably going to come to fruition, but I think I think it might. I think I think it will because look at it. The men can't get along with anybody. They can't get along with the men, they can't get along with the women all that well, and they can't get along with the robots. Well. But you know, I always take issue with it because I think, well, yeah, women are great. Don't get me wrong, I'm one of them. But that does not make us like altruistic, like you know, the best humans on the earth. I mean, I'm going to say it, we're a little bit flawed. Well wait, way to cover up for the female in so many different ways. Anyway, I'm I'm digging myself in here a little bit. Agreading a really interesting article in Popular Mechanics called the Truth about Robotic Robotics on Kenny Valley, and they discussed several of these different studies and scenarios, and they ended up making the case that that when it comes to robots, this the Uncanny Valley is largely hypothetical, and it largely becomes less of an issue when humans are actually face to face with the robots and dealing with the robots on a on a on a one on one basis. Yeah, that's what I read too, is that you know, it's just the uncanny Valley is just a big sweeping generalization and that um, you know, it's basically a short lived psychological state that we're in when we're looking at the ropebot. But once you get comfortable with it, that all of that sort of falls away and you begin to project your feelings onto it no matter what it's I mean, it's like anytime we humans deal with with other humans and encounter a little bit of the uncanny valley, which if you if you're ever talking to somebody for the first time and they maybe have like one of their eyes is you know, pointing out a little to the side, kind of like a Forest Whittaker type of thing. You know, you know, it can be it can be a little like off putting it first, but then you get used to it, and because it's as the person you know and uh and you uh, you sort of jive with their particular appearance and their particular energy, or even if it's just something as weird as like somebody's got a strange scar or strange blemish on their face, or you know, a satan goatee or something, I don't know. Yeah, so you think that Unkenny Valley underestimates our ability to to be adaptable and flexible and and actually our empathy to right. Yeah, yeah, I think we tend to overcome a lot of these things. It's kind of like with noise. You know, people were like, oh, how can somebody live next to train tracks or how or next to an airport, But people do live next train stations and airports, etcetera. And they get used to it because humans can adapt to to not everything, but to almost anything. So this, this is something that I've been wondering about. I know that the voice recognition is a big problem with robots right now, at least a technology that exists that something along the lines of of these programs can success fully take what you're saying and actually understand it and respond accordingly. So that's something that in the future, obviously that it's gonna will be, you know, solved. Yeah, well, I feel like maybe I only here what I'm listening to, so well, yeah, exactly, I know, right, So it could be as good as any caregiver out there. Um, but I sort of wondered, like now that that Surrey is on the new iPhone, like, is this you know apparently like this voice of recognition technology is great and we'll only get better. So I would like to hear from people who have Surrey right now and see, you know, would you say that she has an eight or better chance at guessing what you're saying? And why is she named after Tom Cruise's child right exactly? Why why his daughter? I'm sure there's some sort of Steve Jobs joke in there that that that's a great unsolved mystery. So yeah, so there's some ideas about where caregiving robots are going in the future, what the technology is looking like now, how it's shaping up, and what it might look like. So I would be very interested to hear from everyone out there, I mean, what you think about this, uh, through yourselves going forward, and especially anybody who has dealt with caregiving situations, you know, be it a you know, a parent or a grandparent, um, you know for yourself or I mean yeah, so, um, and also your robot, your caregiving robot naked or dressed up. That's what I want to know well or yeah, or more to the point, So a robot, say, robots helping you use the restroom in your in your your golden years. Do you do you want it to look like a person? Do you want it to look like a bear? You wanted to look like just a thing? Do you want it to basically look like a you know, a side table that you know that lifts up and down. I don't know well, and you know, do you want the sort of end user features that your iPhone has so that you can change, you know, certain aspects of its appearance. You know it's screen um, particularly when you go to the to the red stroum. Yeah. And then and then this also ties in you have a robot is helping you go to the restroom. Yeah. Privacy issues coming to play too, because if you have a robot that, in order to navigate your space is constantly recording, constantly taking note of everything, you don't want your bathroom helper robot to get a virus or get hated. You know that's right, Ryan, Then just you know, all of a sudden updates your Facebook page and whatever that's going to be in the future to say, yeah, my charge just went to the bathroom. Ha ha ha, Yeah, you don't want it tweeting about like, I don't know what I mean. Maybe people was coming from the right place. The robots like yeah, another successful batt movement, and then it tweets it. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if that these are missives that we need to care about. Maybe in the future that's what people will want. All right, Well, let's have our helper bought hand us a listener mail. Thank you, helper boy. So we heard this time from I listened by the name of Mark Healing, and I'm using his full name because Mark is an artist and uh he has a fan page on Facebook. You can check it out and as all all his art shared there. It's pretty awesome, uh Mark Mark Wrightson and says, I just finished listening to your most recent episode about art. This would be this. U is your brand on art, and I was very pleased to hear a different perspective on some of the artists that I've been setting for the past few years. Currently, I'm a student at Emily car University of Art and Design in Vancouver, where I'm in my final year. For a while now, I've been thinking about the idea of an eight beauty. A concept like symmetry, for example, expresses itself as a visual that has been that has an inherent appeal in biological terms, a mate, of course, is more attractive if their features appear more symmetrical. Uh. This idea is pretty straightforward. Beyond just the sexual appeal of symmetry, however, there is also the specific optical effect which occurs when an image, whether very simply or complex, is near. In regards to my practice, I attempt to be very conscious of these notions notions of an eight beauty. Um and he goes on. He shares a lot of really cool ideas with us, and he says that I'd be very pleased to be able to look at my Facebook page. Hopefully some of what I am talking about will become a little more apparent. If you go to the first image in my galery, you will find find my biggest project so far, which is taking about a hundred and seventy four hours at this point. What he's done with point zero zero three millimeter dots in order to further pursue visual complexity, which has its own specific capacity for drawing interviewer at least I hope. So anyways, that is it. I really appreciate your podcast and I have been a regular listener since way back when you were still stuff in the Science leave. The show just gets getting better and better. Thank you very much, Mark. Thanks Mark. I was so pleased that we heard from an artist on this because you know, you and I are artists with words and the written page. I guess I don't know that might be going a little too far, but I did want to hear from a visual artist, to hear their take on what beauty is and symmetry and some of these different ideas that we were talking about. Yeah, totally, And and do check out his Facebook page if you want to see his art. I think it's like facebook dot com slash m r k uh dot I l l I check that out, and certainly any other artists out there that are listening to us. So we'd love to hear what you had to say about the art on the Brain podcast. And you know, we'd love to share our examples of your work on our Facebook page, so let us know. And if you would like to share any of that u with us, be it on Facebook or Twitter. And if you have anything to say about help our robots and the future against Facebook, Twitter. Blow the mind on both of this, and you can always drop us a line at blow of the Mind at how stuff worth dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.