Unlocking Your Inner Robot
[Music]
let me introduce a few friends
[Music]
hello my name is minnie
what’s your name
it looks like we’re in a maze i wonder
what exciting things are gonna happen
around the maze
let’s start walking and discover
together are you ready
runway mini were born in 2014 a small
mobile robot
with a face and a humanoid that can
laugh and cry
invite us to play express happiness fear
anger excitement and our favorite
frustration their minds are products of
assistive robotics and telemedical
robotic intelligence research
created to help people with disabilities
there are particularly good friends with
children with autism spectrum disorder
or asd in ways that humans have managed
rumor and meaning and their human
relative op2
have pioneered unparalleled social
emotional interactions
with children with autism to assist in
their development
and track their progresses i don’t
know what to do
one day opito was shouting in front of a
child 12 year old boy
in part of a controlled experiment in
our lab at the george washington
university
his parents were sitting with me a few
feet away
he’s frustrated the boy answered that’s
frustration
the boy’s parents were shocked they have
not known
their son knew the word frustration
let alone that he’ll be able to identify
the behavior
that defined the feeling it was
revelation
robot could open a new channel of
communication for the boy
that boy lives with autism one precious
member
of the world’s largest minority group
people with disabilities
one billion men women and children
largely misunderstood misrepresented
and underserved the very same humans who
are
characteristically compassionate
collaborative
and charitable i learned that first hand
by working with them
and building many but it was years
before i
unlocked this truth a journey that
started in south korea
to live in a modern high-tech society we
are
expected to master a vast amount of
knowledge in order to keep ourselves
from merciless world failure
competitions it’s a tragedy
idealized around the globe strive to get
a good education
to get a job to be wealthy and become
famous
i was in there too and while fighting my
way through those
challenges i sensed myself becoming
less human and more robotic
ironically enough i wanted to study
robotics so i can make
robots that work for humans ease our
lives and enrich humanity
i realize now i was also trying to
improve my own life
by giving meaning beyond my physical
reach
i had secured a job in the big iit
industry in korea but i wasn’t satisfied
i was not seeing my contribution change
the society
in the ways i thought was possible so
quite uncharacteristically korean of me
i quit koreans and critters
any koreans out there might know what
i’m talking about you don’t dishonor
your parents
but i quit to honor my father his
parents
my grandparents were killed in the
korean war leaving my father
and his four siblings to raise
themselves
as a youngest in the family my father
went to seoul alone
to study the an emerging field of
economic geography
and became a professor to share his
findings with curious minds
as a scholar he devoted his whole life
to the development plans of korea
his example was one of moral courage and
his
was the example i want you to follow so
i left for america
to pursue a phd program at georgia tech
where i could combine my technical
expertise
and my desire to affect individual lives
i joined
our probability project accessible
robotic programming for students with
disability
what i did is not knowing what i know
now about people with disabilities
back then i was one of the misguided
majority
who misunderstood 1 billion men but i
did know
humanized intelligence and assist
technology
systems or robots in my case that
connect with people
with special needs and augment with
perception
and functionality for two years i told
robotic programming
for teenagers with visual impairments
while they told me
patience and perseverance i
learned more than they did and i quickly
discovered that there’s no
one-size-fits-all engineering solution
for the individuals with disabilities
what they needed were practical and
personalized solutions
based on their expressed preferences my
first experiment to test this was a
telepresence robotic system
interactive robotic technology
non-visual descriptions
designed to enable remote navigation
like a simulator for the blind
or hectic skype for the blind i invited
the visually impaired community
and teens adults and even some seniors
came from hours away
to test my system not only they were
excited to use my robots they were
effusive with their insightful
suggestions
one participant was so moved by her
experience that she wrote an essay
in one national center for women in
information technology
nc wit award
my ideas were getting attention and i
was getting
confidence the students whose potential
i was unleashing with our robots
while unlocking the robot in me
when i left the center i poured all of
my energy into programming romo
mini and op2 with my students
and researchers with same hearts and
designed our robots to empower
children with autism why autism
because there are one in every 54
children in the u.s who have autism
because there’s no cure because
geography
and finances have become excuses for
inequitable services
because fewer than 20 of adults with
autism
are employed
and because diagnosed children are
getting only 30 minutes of
one-on-one special care per day or even
per week
these children need more deserve more
and robots can fill in the gaps
but to all the extent all the diagnosis
and thoughtful interventions have proven
to curb symptoms of autism in children
and give them a chance to outgrow it
our robots can contribute to both
lending their hands to human caregivers
and to the children’s families giving
them fresh hope
and here’s how they do it robots like
romo and mini
can stay in the same place space with
the children as such
children do not feel judged or
intimidated by the robot but they
treat them as their equal or playmate
roommate many in turn have the time to
observe and analyze the child’s
activities
model the behaviors the child needs
improving
and report the effectiveness of the
intervention back to clinicians and
parents
this means that romo and many are
working double time when in the play
space
their observation becomes data
quantifiable
and actionable data about children’s
activities from their
movement power speed range of motion
facial expressions eye gaze vocal
responses
and physical interactions this
information is on-boarded as
computational intelligence prompting our
robots
to understand and empathize with the
children
and select appropriate actions to
regulate and guide to child emotional
changes
reduce sensory overloads and ultimately
increase the effectiveness
of the intervention as primates our
robots can invite the child into joyful
social environment
with more natural place settings so
robots do not
dominate the space while providing
social problems
and emotional stimuli and over time our
robots can accumulate knowledge from the
interaction with
each child being more ready and eager to
learn from the child
and grow together and they have
in the experiment after experiment we
watch children with autism
speak their minds instead of ignoring
human instructions
each child watched meaning to some
muscles and card with him
when minnie was lost a treasure a child
with sensory issues
who hated getting his hands dirty tuck
his hands into a ball of sand
to find the treasure for meaning one
child was so tech savvy
and smart he challenged many to speak
you know meaning doesn’t have a mouth to
follow his wild moves
and to become smart the next time they
met our seven years of study
were providing overwhelming proofs that
kids with autism spectrum disorder
were responding as well as typically
developing children
during interactive sessions with our
robots
and not just by reacting to the robot
but by self-initiating interactions
we were learning something new from each
study
each day children and their parents
inspired us
and humbled us each child a testament to
the
fruits of perseverance resilience
and collaboration i do open these smiles
when people challenged my motivations
and questioned
why do you use color when the visual
impaired can’t
see light what is the financial or
economic benefits
of its research for real autism can your
research attract big industry attention
and perhaps the most hurtful why are you
doing this research
if you don’t have autistic children of
your own the question stung
but they were understandable of course
if you are from a society or cultural
background where people’s disability
are kept hidden it’ll be impossible to
understand the need of these studies
of course a parent who sacrificed the
career
and relationship to care for the child
would question how a man like me could
truly understand
and feel how much it hurts to be
misunderstood
i couldn’t pretend to feel that their
reality but i could see their potential
it was through finding potential in
others
they finally unlocked my own
our recent progress with machine
learning algorithms demonstrates that
robotic interventions
could be used as a preliminary
evaluation for at risk detection of
autism
and results from our deemed learning and
artificial intelligence
are enabling our robots to learn dance
moves so they can
teach the steps to children for more
enriching
social and educational experiences
our robots are evolving quickly to learn
the context of social interactions
and human gestures to better understand
the child
and to be better prepared for developing
child
who could very quickly outgrow and
outsmart
a robot we have made tremendous progress
i have to the billion people who had
misunderstood
told me how to listen how to trust
to believe not just in them but in my
own ability
as their fellow human to empower them
with our robotic system and over the
companions
that could change their lives but the
journey is far from over
there’s more to learn romul mini
and opt have just begun to bridge the
gaps in our understanding
of one another but one humanoid alone
can’t alter the
perception of the precious minority
but children can just like one child
after another
has changed me mini here doesn’t see
labels
or doesn’t say them he plays through
them
and so must we thank you very much
you