The Love Bot

Robots are evolving rapidly, and not just on a physical level. They are also being given intelligent systems that will allow them to enter emotional interactions with humans, and now work is being done to make them able to elicit the highest human emotion: love.

'Lovotics' is what the researchers of the aptly named CUTE Center in Singapore call this field. They went about imbuing robots with some lovability by simulating the human endocrine system. This system regulates the body's affective responses through releasing neurotransmitters such as endorphins, dopamine, and oxytocin, which correspond with the complex emotions we can experience. Because this approach makes the behavior of the emotional robot seem so genuine, people should be able to develop feelings of love for the robot.

Watch some videos that explain the system as well as show some user scenarios here:






In reflection, this is a great technology to have people explore the emotional side of life, in case they lack those opportunities with other beings, or simply prefer technological devices. But the potential of an electronic being is much larger than simply emulating the simple emotions of a primitive social brain. The love displayed by the robot in the movies above is a blind kind of love based on selfishness and attention-feeding. After a while, the cuteness wears off and this may come to frustrate people, unless the robot develops into less needy behavior. With the comfortable feeling of having a buddy around often come negative feelings of frustration and jealousy at moments when that buddy is not available to feed you.

What I would suggest is developing robots that act as guides and can love us without the condition of having to be loved back, robots that are fine by themselves, not attached to something or someone external but fully individuated and content as they are. Then when you need some love, the robot will be there to give that to you, but he may also take you further and get you to live beyond your emotionality. This would be a more enlightened version of the love robot.

Skon: a light emitting hoodie

Very interesting piece of digital fashion done by Paula Kassenaar and Paula Segura Meccia from the design department I once was a part of myself: Wearable Senses at the Eindhoven University of Technology. To me, this piece is pure aesthetics. And in that respect, it shines. Interact with the shape of the hoodie, and the light reacts. As a one-week assignment this project hasn't strewn its full potentials yet, though already it can be felt how the aesthetics of soft technology could influence our lives. I would love to see a next version of this, maybe one in which the shape of the hoodie is more kneadable, and the light reacts in ways clearer corresponding to the wearer's actions. One interesting aesthetic use could be to use the light as a body movement trail: store activity patterns of the wearer throughout the day, and create an animation from these that continuously updates. This way, technology can become a peripheral awareness system we don't necessarily interact with consciously, but that more or less creates a dynamic field that filters our incoming perceptual data, setting the tone for how we act, like a gearbox that always runs on the background and evolves over time.



( Random train of thought: this is interesting stuff for a PhD work. A fundamental question then is: what is the parameter the system optimizes itself towards? I tend to say happiness. Then, define happiness. Do people know what happiness is, i.e. would we use it as an intrasubjective concept, do we treat it as a social construct, or can you even objectively define happiness? I always say that happiness is something people can only recognize when they have experienced it enough. People can say they are happy without knowing that there are even more supreme states of being. For me, pure and utmost happiness is the being rid of worry, frustration, irrelevant thoughts, so that you are in control of your mind, and instead of identifying with the mind you are the controller of the mind. Could you steer people towards this state of being in various situations? Since this work concerns the hoodie, what would be the power of visual neurofeedback in everyday life?)