Greetings Economists,
The U.S. military is seeking to give soldiers various kinds of tools to
endure the terrors of battle. The following technology review indicates how
the U.S. military is approaching the issue of emotion production and what to
do with such information. Aside from the normal question about another
typical unrealistic technology boon doggle, does emotion production
technology have implications for working class structure?
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
Feeling Blue? This Robot Knows It By Louise Knapp
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56921,00.html
02:00 AM Jan. 01, 2003 PT
Science fiction often depicts robots of the future as machines that look
like people and feel, or at least hanker after the ability to feel, human
emotions.
A team at Vanderbilt University is turning this notion on its head by
developing a robotic assistant whose goal is not to develop emotions, but
rather respond to the moods of its human master.
By processing information sent from physiological sensors the human
counterpart wears, the Vanderbilt robot can detect when its master is having
a bad day and approach with the query: "I sense that you are anxious. Is
there anything I can do to help?"
But do people really want a machine sensing their anxiety and offering
assistance?
If that's all the Vanderbilt robot was intended to do, it wouldn't have much
shelf life. But the research team has a specific kind of service in mind for
its mechanical assistant.
Researchers envision the emotion-sensing robot serving military personnel on
the battlefield.
"The human commander may get into trouble but be unable to ask for help,"
said Nilanjan Sarkar, team member and assistant professor of Vanderbilt
University's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
"In cases like these his robot assistant will be able to detect his stress
and either communicate the need for assistance or assist in some way
itself."
The robot's sensors consist of an electrocardiogram to record heartbeat, a
skin sensor that can detect tiny changes in sweat production, an
electromyography sensor that detects minute muscle activity in the jaw and
brow, a blood-volume pressure sensor that measures the constriction on the
arteries and a temperature sensor.
"The robot uses algorithms to translate the information it gets from the
sensors into a format it can understand," Sarkar said. "One of our most
important claims is that the robot can process this information in real
time."
So far tests with the robot have proved promising. The machine responds on
cue to signals of distress and approaches its human counterpart to ask if
he's OK.
The robot's biggest hurdle may not be its design but rather its human
counterpart accepting it as a trusted assistant.
"Speaking as a former soldier, the last thing I would want is an artificial
girlfriend by my side to nag me about how I am feeling while out in the
battlefield," said John Petrik, corporate communications officer at the
Office of Naval Research.
But, Petrik added, as one of the project's sponsors, the ONR believes the
research has potential to develop smarter robotic aids for military use.
Other robotics researchers agree that the Vanderbilt robot has potential but
needs fine-tuning.
"Taking these (physiological) signals is certainly a good indication of the
human state, but we are at a very primitive stage of understanding the
relation between the internal states -- what is observable -- and human
emotion," said Takeo Kanade, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie
Mellon University.
The Vanderbilt team has time to work the kinks out of its robot's
emotion-detecting abilities. Sarkar admits that it will be a few more years
before the robot makes it onto the battlefield.
