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