Pop, the Question (S6: E48)
Robot Talk
Featured Guest Matt Wiese (Alumnus, Drexel University; Mechanical Engineer, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)
Host and Producer Melinda Lewis, PhD (Director of Strategy, Pennoni Honors College)
Dean Paula Marantz Cohen, PhD
Executive Producer Erica Levi Zelinger (Director, Marketing & Media)
Producer Brian Kantorek (Associate Director, Marketing & Media)
Research and Script Melinda Lewis, PhD
Audio Engineering and Editing Brian Kantorek
Original Theme Music Brian Kantorek
Production Assistance Noah Levine
Social Media Outreach Olivier Jacques
Graphic Design Zale Heller
Logo Design Michal Anderson
Additional Voiceover Malia Lewis
Recorded February 9, 2023 through virtual conferencing.
Pop, the Question is a production of Marketing & Media in Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. The views expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of Drexel University or Pennoni Honors College. Copyright © 2023 Drexel University
Episode Summary
There’s more than meets the eye, when it comes to the representation of robots in popular culture. In TV and movies like The Terminator, robots have a way of appearing much more advanced and seamless than engineers actually experience behind the scenes. Host Dr. Melinda Lewis joins U.S. Naval Research Laboratory mechanical engineer and Drexel University alumnus Matt Wiese to define what we mean by robots, cyborgs, and androids and to rethink how the media portrays technological advances of this type. Wiese also discusses how his work on Drexel’s comedy improv team applies to collaborative work in the robotics field.
TRANSCRIPT
Melinda Lewis:
Welcome to Pop The Question, A podcast that exists at the intersection of pop culture and academia. We sit down and talk about our favorite stuff through the lenses of what we do and who we are from. Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University, Dr. Melinda Lewis here, I'm your host.
Hello. I'm here with Matt Wiese, an alum of Drexel University, former Star Scholar, and currently a mechanical engineer at the US Naval Research Laboratory. And we're here to talk about robots. Hi Matt. How are you?
Matt Wiese:
Hi, I'm doing great. Happy to be here.
Melinda Lewis:
Are you excited?
Matt Wiese:
Oh, I'm very excited. I love talking about robots.
Melinda Lewis:
I got so excited about talking about this that I realized that I don't know what a robot is really. And as I was going through all of the examples, I was like, Terminator, Robocop, like-
Matt Wiese:
Sure. Yeah.
Melinda Lewis:
District nine. And then I realized, no, I don't know if those all constitute robots. Actually, I don't think any of the things that I'm thinking of are.
Matt Wiese:
No, they all do.
Melinda Lewis:
Oh, good. Oh, good.
Matt Wiese:
Yeah.
Melinda Lewis:
So I'm not completely wrong, so can you explain to me why I am right?
Matt Wiese: This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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Yeah, absolutely. So robot is really the broadest term you could use to describe basically any sort of machine that is capable of sensing its environment and making some computations to make a decision and then perform an action in the real world.
Speaker 4:
And though we are worlds apart, like us, there's more to them than meets the eye.
Matt Wiese:
There's some debate among engineers that what qualifies as a robot, for example, the thermostat in your house I think could qualify as a really simple robot, it just measures the temperature. It decides whether or not to turn the air conditioning or the heater on or something like a dishwasher or an elevator. These are really simple robots that are already all around us and make our life much easier, but don't really fit into the classical science fiction robot that looks like a human and is waiting on you. But yeah, so an Android would be a robot that looks like a person that actually comes from a Greek word that means just like, looks like, man. And so that would be a robot like C-3PO from Star Wars, which is really what generalized and popularize that term of Android. And in the robots community, we don't really use the word Android too much.
Speaker 4:
Nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Matt Wiese:
We more use the word humanoid robot, and that would just be any robot that has two arms and a head, and sometimes two feet, but not necessarily. Something like NASA's would be an example of a robot that just has two arms and a head and that that'd be considered a humanoid robot.
Melinda Lewis:
Is there beef with the term Android? Is there a reason why y'all don't use it or is it just to be more technical?
Matt Wiese:
There's surprising very little beef in the robotics community. We're just excited to talk about robots. I think that there is some sort of distance between the Android of movies and humanoid robots of real life, that I think humanoid robots are a little bit more descriptive rather than Android is a little bit more narrowly focused than gender-specific. But there is some more distinction between what a cyborg is. So that would be a robot that has some sort of living organism that is modified with electronics. So that would be your Robocop or your Iron Man, where it's part person, part living thing, but is modified or enhanced by electronics. And there's actually a good amount of real life applications where someone has a pacemaker or a cochlear hearing implant or a robotic prosthetic limb. So those people would all be considered cyborgs or someone living. There's also exoskeleton suits that help people lift packages and industrial scenarios. So there's actually a good amount of progress of creating some real life cyborgs all around. That's
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Listen, the Terminator and infiltration unit, part man, part machine, underneath it is a hyper alloy combat chassis, microprocessor controlled, fully armored, very tough, but outside it's living human tissue slash skin, hair, blood. Grown for the cyborgs.
Speaker 6:
Look, Reese, I don't know what you want.
Speaker 5:
Pay attention.
Melinda Lewis:
Coming from a cultural studies background, cyborgs are probably the ones that in the humanities we spend a lot more time talking about because Donna Haraway, she wrote the Cyborg Manifesto that we use all the time to talk about the convergence of bodies and tech.
Matt Wiese:
Oh, sure. Yeah. And it's definitely a huge industry of both being able to enhance the human body as well as just help with people with disabilities. It's a great field to work in where you really get to feel like you're making the difference where instead of just making a pile of parts that is working together, then you're actually able to interact with the human who is actually using the product or using the machine. Nah, that's definitely really rewarding.
Melinda Lewis:
As you were talking, I realized my first robot was the little dogs that would do the little flips, and you would just be so excited for that little puppy.
Speaker 7:
Hey, [inaudible 00:05:06].
Speaker 8:
You what? New Poochie reacts to pats, sounds, and light. What's the matter, fellow?
Speaker 7:
Just begging for his bone. And listen to them sing to each other.
Melinda Lewis:
It was the most invigorating time of my life, perhaps.
Matt Wiese:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Or like those Furbies.
Melinda Lewis:
Oh, yeah. This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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Matt Wiese:
And just the eyes look up and they blink and that's all it takes to make you think, "Oh, this thing is alive."
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah.
Matt Wiese:
"This is my pet."
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah. Oh, that was such a phenomenon. Of course, by now, almost all of us have heard of what toy stars are beginning to call the F word F for Furbies.
Speaker 9:
I can't tell you what he's saying, but I know he wants something.
Melinda Lewis:
He sounds like my husband.
Now like any interactive toy, if you don't play with Furby, he goes to sleep and you may have to reset him.
Again. He sounds like my husband.
How do you think popular culture kind of handles robots generally and maybe these delineations specifically?
Matt Wiese:
Popular culture generally wildly overestimates what a robot can do. We're still really at the point where a humanly robot, if it can walk without falling over, then that's really impressive. Yeah. Let alone think for itself or fight crime or become a superhero. Robots are still in a really early infancy phase when compared to things that are shown on screen in popular culture. And even videos of real robots online, people see a robot doing a back flip and think that we're only two years away from robots taking over.
Melinda Lewis:
This is it. That's it.
Matt Wiese:
That's right.
Melinda Lewis:
And we don't see the background. We don't see the 90 takes it took to get the robot to flip.
Matt Wiese:
Yep. Yeah, absolutely. This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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Melinda Lewis:
In that particular way. So it's like, yeah, this is all we get. And so this is the limited vantage point that we see.
Matt Wiese:
And so many times it's like you try to make a robot do something really impressive and you're just constantly breaking the robot and you're pushing the limits of both the software and the hardware. And there's so many points where the robot breaks and you have to take an extra month to just rebuild the robot so you can do a second attempt. And that's how progress is made where you find the weak points and are able to get something that is a little bit more reliable.
Melinda Lewis:
Do you think that there's a good example in popular culture of robots or is it all pretty bad?
Matt Wiese:
One of my favorite movies is Big Hero 6.
Melinda Lewis:
Oh, okay.
Matt Wiese:
The robotics itself is a little farfetched. Having a robot being able to fly and diagnose someone's health conditions. And the actual development of the robot is actually pretty dead on. There's the sequence, particularly in the film where there's a video log that they're reviewing of this older brother trying out the robot, and it cuts between trial six, it's where it turns the lights off, and because it takes so much power to run and trial 33 where it starts to accidentally slap him in the face because it's not doing what he thought it would. And then essentially trial 84 and it's finally working.
Tadashi Hadama:
This is Tadashi Hadama, and this is the 84th test. What do you say, big guy?
Baymax:
Hello, I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion.
Tadashi Hadama:
It works. He works. Oh, this is amazing. You work. I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.
Matt Wiese:
And that kind of both, a) just videotaping everything, happens all the time where we want to be able to go back and look at footage to see if the robot does fail, what happens first and what is causing the failure, as well as just the emotional journey. So there's definitely the nostalgia there, seeing animated movies that portray robotics that inspire a younger generation.
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Did you start in high school or did you start far younger?
Matt Wiese:
I was always a hands-on kid building and tinkering, but I think the first robot I ever built was in high school. We had a robotics club that was fortunate enough to participate in this yearly competition where you basically build a robot from the ground up. And it was a really good learning experience of just knowing what actually went into making one, both the mechanical design, which is what I leaned more towards, but also the electronics and the software.
Melinda Lewis:
Do you remember when you were like, this is it. This is what I want to go into?
Matt Wiese:
I think there were a few pivotal moments. The first major one was seeing the movie Ironman that came out in 2008.
Melinda Lewis:
That feels like a root.
Matt Wiese:
And I think I was 13 years old at the time, and that was just a really inspiring movie, seeing Tony Stark build this robot. And I think that was also a movie that shows the iterations and the development of having the first prototype that kind of works, but is a little tacky and put together and building a cave with scraps and then going and making that second generation, which is much better, but still has a lot of problems. And just like that iteration period I that not being perfect the first time, and that is okay, and really fine-tuning and going through that design process was really intriguing as a little kid. I
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts:
Thought you said you were done making weapons.
Tony Stark:
It isn't, this is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless. I didn't expect that.
Matt Wiese:
And then that inspired me to try out the robotics club at school and start actually playing with my hands and building something that resembled what someone could classify as a robot. And then I think the second pivotal moment was at that same time of joining the robotics club in high school was the first physics class I took. I was finally learning things that I thought was really cool of learning projectile motion and all these different types of phenomena that was really fascinating to me.
And so that kind of felt even more of a confidence booster that I could study these things and have it be applicable to something that I was really interested in. And then I think the last one was actually the internship I did through the Drexel Star program of working in a robotics lab and actually seeing that robotics could be a career and not just something that some people meet up after school and do, but people dedicate their lives to and get paid to do, to develop and test and break these robots is This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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something that was an eye-opening experience for me that I think really gave me the confidence that I could pursue a career in robotics.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, I think the Star program is great because it provides the experience to spend 10 weeks of a summer really learning a little bit more about a field and working with a mentor who can help guide you, I'm assuming, on this journey.
Matt Wiese:
Yeah, absolutely. At the time we were trying to get this humanoid robot to play the drums, and I was 3D printing some adapters for the hands so that I could actually hold onto the drumsticks, and then I ended up breaking a hand and having to completely rebuild the hand. It was one value wrong, the rate at which the robot turns its wrist, and I added an extra zero and it just went really, really fast and over torqued the motor and then it broke a finger because the stick hits too hard on the drum.
Speaker 14:
I know you me, one thing I can tell you is you got to be free. Come together, right now.
Melinda Lewis:
When you broke that robot's hand. Did you feel bad?
Matt Wiese:
Oh, absolutely. Well, yeah. Bad for the robot, bad for myself, bad for the professor that might have to buy a new hand, but it turned out it wasn't bad.
Speaker 15:
Hey, it's your mom. I have a question about that podcast you do. Are you on the Instagram or the Twitter or the Facebook? If I have an idea for a podcast, how do I get in touch with you? Love you. Bye.
Melinda Lewis:
What's up, mom? Yeah, so you can find us on all those things actually. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Just go to Pop Quest pod on any one of those and follow. If you want to send us ideas, you can either go over to our website and leave us a message at Pop Q podcast. Or you can get us directly at popq@drexel.edu. You can actually find us on iTunes, Spotify, Stitchr. I can help set it up when I get home, but then you have to promise me to rate and review. All right, love you. Bye.
I did do some snooping. And you were a part of Drexel's improv team.
Matt Wiese:
Yes, yes.
Melinda Lewis:
The Drexel football team, which doesn't exist, but does exist.
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Yes, we kind of exist.
Melinda Lewis:
But how has improv... How do you work that into your projects?
Matt Wiese:
Yeah, it's actually surprisingly really applicable to designing hardware and working in a collaborative setting. In improv, you walk out on stage with some teammates and you have no idea what you're going to say or what they're going to respond to. And you're building this scene together and establishing characters and then trying to find the funny in that scene and trying to find a world in which something quirky might happen that gets them laughs. And it's really a great lesson in being able to be present in the moment and collaborate with what is currently being said, and think about what other people are saying and that's directly applicable to the collaborative process of designing robotics or just designing hardware in general.
You meet up with three or four people and they're all sitting around a table and everyone's kind of throwing out ideas. And some of them might seem silly until the ideas kind of start to not feel silly and you start think of something that might actually be novel and new that someone hasn't thought of before. And that kind of process of listening to other people's ideas and incorporating them into your own and reworking them into something that is new is I think what people find funny about improv. And I think what actually makes great engineering of being able to collaborate, synthesize new ideas and not be close minded. And that's been something that's surprisingly useful from comedy to improv to engineering to just in life in general.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, I might be wrong, but I feel like a lot of popular culture texts make robotics a solo endeavor. It's always the lone man.
Matt Wiese:
This one person in the lab just turning a wrench and all of a sudden everything is figured out.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, which is probably maybe a throwback to Frankenstein and the creation of whatever.
Frankenstein:
It's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive. In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God.
Melinda Lewis:
I've never heard of anybody actually working at Drexel or talking about robotics in a way that was a solo project.
Matt Wiese:
No, no. And that's what makes it so much fun of how multidisciplinary it is of being able to sit us across the table from someone that is in a totally different mindset of thinking about how they would control the things I design or someone else thinking about how to give it power and make sure that it knows its This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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position. And there's definitely a real camaraderie of collaboration between all those different types of fields in order to actually get something together.
Melinda Lewis:
I think that's also part of the thing is what world can we create and what world can we build and what can we do to fill in those gaps?
Matt Wiese:
No, I think popular culture, especially in robotics, they like to basically jump from building the robot to the robot is built and is now suddenly evil, and there's so much space in between there. That's definitely a little overstated from the current state of technology.
Kyle Reese:
That Terminator is out there. You can't be bargained with it, can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
Melinda Lewis:
Why does the robot get the bad rap? Why is its consciousness raising always so destructive?
Matt Wiese:
Well, I think in part because it is so interesting to be able to... Almost going back to that Frankenstein story of having something of your own creation that turns against you one day because you've given it too much freedom to think on its own. And I think that is a really compelling story to be entertained by. But in terms of reality, we're incredibly far away from that. There's tons of research into how robots think for itself, but that's in the level of making sure they can be able to stand and balance by itself and not ponder life in its existence. And so thinking back to Ultron or a Terminator that have decided that the robots are better than the humans and they need you to be taken out, those make compelling stories but are less realistic.
Melinda Lewis:
Have you ever seen Small Wonder?
Matt Wiese:
No. No. Is that a movie?
Melinda Lewis:
No. It was a television show in the eighties.
Speaker 18:
She's fantastic, made of plastic, microchips here and there. She's a small wonder, brings love and laughter everywhere.
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It was about a family and the father built a robot daughter that they named Vicki. She looked like a little girl, but everything about her was definitely robot. But of course, nobody in the community clocked her.
Speaker 19:
Isn't he cute?
Speaker 20:
My name is Rodney, pleased to meet you.
Speaker 19:
My name is Vicki, please to meet you.
Matt Wiese:
There's a lot of times in movies, I'm thinking of Alien, where it's like that character was a robot the whole time.
Melinda Lewis:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Matt Wiese:
I notice and it's like their face falls off and there's all wires underneath, and everyone was tricked because it sounded like a person and it looked like a person.
Speaker 21:
It's a robot.
Matt Wiese:
And I think it's interesting to seeing what the general pop culture view of what the future would look like. There is something like Back to the Future where everything is super clean and looks amazing, and then the slow transition into the early 2000s where it's disaster movies and post apocalyptic movies and the robots are taking over, kind of that transition from the popular culture point of view of maybe people got sick of seeing the world in the future being perfect and they want to see something more gritty. And maybe that's the narrative that people are more interested in. And so the robot perfectly fits that narrative of it turning evil.
Melinda Lewis:
Yeah, you're so right, because I was thinking about the Jetsons and how that's such a wonderful... Look at this. Imagine this wonderful future where we don't have to work as hard and we can play with our robots and have a robot maid who can also be sassy. And it's just going to be such a lovely world.
Rosey - Robot Maid:
I may be homely Buster, but I'm S-M-A-R-T smart.
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I like her and I'll take her.
Rosey - Robot Maid:
Oh, thank you, ma'am. Thank you.
Melinda Lewis:
And then cut to the eighties where it's just everybody's hunting you all the time.
Matt Wiese:
That's right.
ED-209:
Please put down your weapon, you've got 20 seconds to comply.
Dick Jones:
I think you'd better do what he says, Mr. Kinney.
ED-209:
[inaudible 00:20:16] You now have 15 seconds to comply. You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9. You now have five seconds to comply.
Speaker 26:
Help me. Get out. [inaudible 00:20:39]
Matt Wiese:
Yeah. And I think that that does ring true of anything that a robot does, a human is behind it. Even all of these crazy maneuvers and gymnastics and robots doing all these complex things, there's a team of dozens of engineers that are put in their life's work into making that happen. And having something that just starts to happen by itself is totally out of the realm of possibility. And we're saying that more and more of, even with AI and having AI text feedback and all of that is just taken from human writing and just kind of regurgitating it in new ways. And so I think that is, that's similar to what a robot would do, having pre-programmed paths that it is able to choose which way to navigate a corner or navigate a hallway. And a human has planned multiple different paths, and it's just choosing which one it thinks is best.
Melinda Lewis:
When choosing what to assign a robot to do, what is the decision that this is what we're going to make him do?
Matt Wiese:
I think part of it is just giving a goal to try and work towards. Yeah, what is the useful purpose of having a robot try and play the drums. So there's not a huge application there, but of all the algorithms that you develop in order to get the robot reliable enough to be in time with music or getting some hardware upgrades so that the hand can move that fast. That really gives you good milestones to hit in order to This transcript was exported on May 19, 2023 - view latest version here.
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show what the robot's capability is. And I think it's helpful from a demonstration point of view. I think a lot of robotics is very show and tell. It's very something that you can see the progress being made. I feel like a lot of times we're just trying to play catch up to nature and having something that can even do a fraction of what the human body can do is really impressive.
Speaker 27:
There's electric cars, there's electric trains. Here comes a robot with electrics brains. Robot parade, robot parade. Wave the flags that the robots made. Robot parade. Robot parade.
Matt Wiese:
I think one of the things that makes robotics such a fun field to work in, is the fact that there is so much distance between the current state of the art of technology and what is depicted in movies, that it gives you such a big runway for being able to contribute to the field. And it keeps things really exciting to be able to make new hardware that gets you one step closer to having something that can wait on you hand and foot or can make your life that much easier. And the main takeaway is if you're worried about the robot taking over and having to fight back against them, you can definitely sleep well at night knowing that we're a long, long ways away from that.
Melinda Lewis:
Well, Matt, that was, that's all that I needed to hear. So thank you very much for being here and putting my mind at ease because I spend countless nights wondering about our future, courtesy of Terminator.
Matt Wiese:
Oh yeah, you can sleep easy.
Melinda Lewis:
Pop the Question was researched and hosted by Dr. Melinda Lewis. Our theme music and episodes are produced by Brian Kantorek, with additional audio production by Noah Levine. All of this was done under the directorship of Erica Levi Zelinger, the deanship of Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen and the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University.
Speaker 28:
I know it's important. I do. I honestly do. But we talking about practice, man. What we talking about? Practice. We're talking about practice, man.
Speaker 21:
I'll be back.