Why a human makes a better robot. Not everyone with a browser can attend Wednesday's fifth annual Webby Awards, but that doesn’t mean they can’t join in the hoopla.
Up to 1,000 online party-crashers will be able to press flesh with the digerati, touch up their lipstick in the ladies lounge, and explore backstage using a remote-control human robot equipped with a camera and audio called the Tele-Actor.
The Tele-Actor is not technically a robot. She’s a human being -- raver-fave DJ Pollywog -- who is assigned to obey human commands just like a robot. By registering on tele-actor.net, participants will be able to follow her activities through a series of still images transmitted from a wireless camera attached to the Tele-Actor’s head.
Each image will be accompanied by a question, posed by an on-site director: For example, Who should I meet? Who should I kiss? What cocktail should I order? Which door should I open? Virtual partygoers will then have a minute to vote and see how others are voting. The director will convey their decision audibly to DJ Pollywog, who will then, if all goes well, perform the task.
The performance explores two major challenges facing robot scientists: interface – that is, how do you get a hunk of metal and wires to do what you want -- and collaborative control, which is putting hundreds of people rather than one single person in command of one object’s behavior.
Traditionally we use robots to go places and do things that humans cannot, such as photograph Mars’ surface or defuse bombs. So why send in a human to do a robot’s job? Interface, of course.
"The problem with robots – and I’ve been working with them for 15 years – is they’re not very reliable," explains Ken Goldberg, the professor of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley who’s directing the project. (Goldberg is also the husband of Webby Awards founder, Tiffany Shlain.) Among the things that a robot cannot yet do are make small talk, sip wine, and flirt.
In many ways, by using a person, Tele-Actor leapfrogs over current limitations of robot technology. Dinesh Pai, a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia who specializes in robotic research, predicts that we’re a good 10 years away from a robot able to obey ambiguous commands and behave more like a human.
"We take a lot of what humans do for granted – extremely simple things like picking up an object. A 2-year-old can do that. Telling a robot to do that is very hard," he said.
Judith Donath, director of MIT’s Sociable Media Research group, is more fascinated by the social aspects of the project. She conducted two similar Tele-Actor projects at MIT that used live video feed, rather than still images.
"On the Web, people are so shielded that they don’t have any sense of responsibility whatsoever. So you have this human being who’s being directed by this anonymous, faceless group," she explains. "It did very quickly go into trying to get the actor to do something absurd," Donath recalls, including stealing and eating the dinner of a distinguished guest and leading the audience in a sing-a-long.
Although the Tele-Actor on hand at the Webby Awards will be for entertainment purposes only, collaborators on the project foresee many practical applications for their work.
"The primary application is education. You could send a whole group of students to visit a volcano, or a Chinese village," predicts Goldberg.
"You could send one Tele-Actor journalist into a war zone and the audience is literally directing the reporter to go over there and take a shot," says UC Berkeley engineering department writer-in-residence David Pescovitz.
And at the Webbys? The audience could yank a sparkling award out of a winner’s hand, guzzle down a couple cocktails, before launching into an off-key rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." When robot and human worlds collide, strange things can and do happen.
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