[This Washington Post story uses vivid examples to highlight cultural differences in how people experience medium-as-social-actor presence with robots that provide different sets of social cues. See the original story for two short videos. –Matthew]

[Image: Robots wearing nurse uniforms carry medical documents Wednesday at Mongkutwattana General Hospital in Bangkok. Credit: Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters).]

Friendly nurse or nightmare-inducing machine? How culture programs our taste in robots.

This is Thailand’s idea of an attractive robot. Americans might be terrified.

By Peter Holley
February 7, 2019

Slowly and silently, they glide across the floor wearing bright yellow dresses that look as though they were plucked from a haunted 1920s boarding school.

Beneath shoulder-length brown wigs, two blazing red eyes — each one massive and ghoulish — glare from behind a darkened pane of transparent plastic like a demonic predator lurking in the dark.

No, you haven’t encountered some Mothman-like terror entombed inside a department store mannequin, the byproduct of a twisted, futuristic fever dream. You’ve merely stepped inside Mongkutwattana General Hospital in Bangkok, where a team of robot nurses has been unleashed to make life easier.

Their job: ferrying documents between eight stations inside the health-care facility, a job that used to be carried out busy human nurses, hospital director Reintong Nanna told Newsflare last year.

“These robotic nurses help to improve the efficiency and performance of working in the hospital,” he said. “They are not being used to reduce the number of employees.”

The trio of unsmiling machines — which can be programmed to speak both Thai and English — have been named Nan, Nee and Nim, according to the news outlet. Nanna said they move by following a magnetic strip that winds across the hospital floor, and can travel several miles each day.

Because they reduce human error, he added, the hospital plans to increase their workload to include moving equipment and preparing drug dosages.

Humanoid robots are taking a more active role in caring for the sick and elderly in Asia, but don’t expect to see similar machines roaming the halls of U.S. hospitals any time soon. That’s because robot design is often culture-specific, with some countries excitedly deploying machines that would probably terrify sickly patients in other countries, according to Cory Kidd, founder and CEO of Catalia Health, which has designed its own smiling, doe-eyed “personal healthcare robot” named “Mabu.”

His reaction to the glowing red eyes currently staring down Thai patients: “They’re creepy.”

“Robot aesthetics are culturally dependent,” he said, noting that the Thai hospital bots were designed in China. “If we had these nurses in a U.S. hospital, that would not work. They wouldn’t survive a day. But they might be received completely differently in Thai hospitals.”

Online surveys have revealed contrasts in how robots are perceived by country as well. While both Europeans and Japanese respondents agree that robots should be used to assist with difficult and repetitive tasks, the nature of acceptable tasks — and the degree of intimacy involved — differs widely, according to a team of international researchers. Read more on Friendly nurse or nightmare-inducing machine? How culture programs our taste in robots….

[The startup company described in this TechCrunch story is working to combine the interactive immersion of virtual reality with miniature robots that can move within a human body, providing surgeons with an expanded version of remote “presence in the body” that has great potential for improving medical care. See the original story for an additional image. –Matthew]

Bill Gates-backed Vicarious Surgical adds a virtual reality twist to robots in the operating room

Jonathan Shieber
February 13, 2019

In an operating room in rural Idaho, doctors prep a patient for surgery. They make a tiny, thumb-sized incision into the patient and insert a small robot while across the country a surgeon puts on a virtual reality headset, grabs their controllers and prepares to operate.

While this scene may seem like science fiction now, a Charlestown, Mass.-based startup called Vicarious Surgical is developing the technology to make that vision a reality.

The company’s co-founders, Adam Sachs and Sammy Khalifa, have been developing and refining the technology almost since they met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as undergraduates.

The 27-year-old Sachs said that he and Khalifa formally launched the company roughly five years ago when they graduated from MIT, and have been working on it ever since.

“We’ve been working on ways to miniaturize robotics and put all of the motion of surgery into the abdominal cavity,” says Sachs. “If you put all of the motion inside the abdominal cavity you are not confined to motion around the incision sites.”

What really set the founders’ brains buzzing was the potential for combining their miniature robots with the ability to see inside the body using virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift.

“It wasn’t a ‘Eureka!’ moment, but more like two-or-three weeks as the vision came together,” says Sachs. “We can make robotics more human-like and virtual reality would give you that presence in the body.” Read more on Vicarious Surgical combines VR and miniature robots to put surgeons inside patient’s body…

[The UK’s Channel 4 will air a program featuring the use of holograms to create the illusion of presence after death, as reported in this story from The Scotsman. Other coverage notes a comparison to the anthology series Black Mirror and the fact that “the series is based on the A+E Networks format Voices From the Grave that is in development for A&E by Simon Andreae’s Naked TV” (Deadline Hollywood). For commentary about the new show see The Telegraph (subscription required). –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: A+E Networks via Deadline Hollywood]

New Channel 4 show to deliver hologram messages from the dead

SCOTSMAN REPORTER
30 January 2019

A new TV show will deliver messages from terminally-ill people to their loved ones via their own hologram after they have died.

Channel 4 has announced Ghost (working title), which it describes as “a profoundly moving, revelatory and ultimately uplifting television first”.

Six terminally-ill people will “create incredible experiences to comfort the loved ones they are leaving behind, which will be delivered after their death”.

The contributors, of varied ages, will write and record messages for their closest relatives and loved ones.

“Using cutting-edge holographic technology”, the “deeply personal missives” will be “delivered post-mortem, by the subjects themselves in vivid, three-dimensional, holographic form, allowing them to appear as if from beyond the grave”. Read more on Presence after death: New TV show to deliver hologram messages from the dead…

[Here’s a clever idea for evoking social presence among travelling strangers; the story is from Standby Nordic; follow the link at the end for a 1:11 minute video. –Matthew]

KLM ‘hologram bars’ launch in Nordics

Read more on KLM launches ‘live hologram bars’ to connect travelling strangers in airports…

[Experts in medium-as-social-actor presence likely will find the results of the study reported in this story from Interesting Engineering interesting if not surprising. For more information including three videos see the press release via EurekAlert! –Matthew]

[Image: Pepper. Credit: Pixabay]

Robot on the Trolley Car Track: How Valuable is Robot Life?

A new study asks how much value do we put on robot life and leads to some surprising conclusions.

By John Loeffler
February, 09th 2019

Two professors of psychology reveal an interesting take of the classic trolley problem: would you sacrifice a robot to save a human life? The answer might surprise you. Read more on Robot on the trolley car track: How valuable is robot life?…