They're becoming more common all the time. How do humans react to robots in everyday life?
Sherry Roberts, Compute! Issue 131
Meeting a nine-foot-tall robot at a company bash can be intimidating. But it's nearly impossible not to like the bucket of bolts when it dons a bow tie and admits in a soft voice that parties make it nervous.
Logan Enterprises, a Greensboro, North Carolina, entertainment company, designs, builds, and operates nine foot-tall robots for corporate events. The robots, which are actually intricate machine costumes with a human operator inside, are a melding of man and machine.
Creating interaction between humans and robots is the job of Logan inventors David Rawlins, David Hall, and Dan Hall. They have discovered that people respond positively to robots that project familiar human characteristics.
"If people see the humanness in the robot, they tend to react better," says David Hall. "For example, the robot can offer to shake hands, or it can give a compliment: 'That's a lovely sweater you're wearing'"
Logan's hulking robots consistently win over children at Disney World in Florida, Hall says. "We'll go up to a kid wearing a Mickey Mouse hat and say 'I know you; you're Mickey Mouse.' The robot, which projects childlike innocence, easily makes a friend."
Incredibly, children show little fear of the Logan robots. "Eighty percent of the children come up and shake hands," Hall says. "They want to know how it's built and how it moves. Every kid has a robot in his world. Robots let people bring in their own imagination."
Logan's inventors have experimented extensively with body language, voice pitch, color (red eyes appear menacing, while blue ones come off as friendly), and accessories (from bow ties to sunglasses to jams) to unlock the human heart.
But personalizing the robot can go too far.
"There is a fine line, knowing the limitations of being human for the robot." Hall says, "You don't want to get too close to being human, as in androids, because that scares people."
Most humans would probably feel threatened by an industrial robot that can work three shifts without a coffee break--bow tie or no bow tie. But robots can do more than entertain at parties, build cars, patrol secure areas, and blast tanks to kingdom come. They can also occupy barstools.
Host International, a division of Marriott, is cashing in on two trends--the attractive features of robots and the most popular program on television, "Cheers." Host operates airport concessions across the country. Now it's planning to open Cheers bars in 46 airports. Two have already opened, in the Detroit Metro and Minneapolis-St. Paul International airports. The bars are more than sawdust and brass, though. They feature mechanical drinking buddies permanently stationed at the end of the bar, like their human counterparts on "Cheers," Norm and Cliffy. Actually because the actors who portray Norm and Cliff refused to give permission to use their likenesses, the two robots look more like Laurel and Hardy. The two trade wisecracks and banter while cradling beers in their hands.
The robots--known as Hank Gifford. who sells hardware, and Bob Johnson, who sells insurance--currently vegetate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul location to celebrate its opening. New robots are being built to take their place in Detroit.
Advanced Animation, a Vermont company in the robot business for 30 years, created the dipsomaniacal robots. A representative of Host International stated that the public's response to the two robots has been "overwhelmingly positive." Far from the mundane, regular guys they portray. Hank and Bob have become celebrities, written about in newspapers from New York to Los Angeles, as well as in the Detroit and Minneapolis-St. Paul papers.
As a good example to the travelling public, Bob and Hank never actually take a drink from their glasses. Their robotic arms don't work. Only their upper bodies and faces are animated.