Zeno's Misguided Parents
by

Alex Mendelsohn

In the 1950s, Boy's Life Magazine featured a how-to article that described a tin-can robot called Gizmo. If you were clever enough to scrounge the requisite parts, innovating when you couldn't find them, the article promised you could build and own a rendition of Gizmo. It would be an honest-to-goodness robot that could move its arms and swivel its head, flash its red Christmas tree eyes, and (hopefully) turn your friends green with envy.

I recall spending many an hour scheming about Gizmo with my next-door neighbor's kid, and endlessly tinkering in my dad's basement workshop. We cobbled together myriad scraps of metal and wood, and a few surplus dc motors, and who knows what else, in the expectation we could replicate the Boy's Life machine.

We were marginally successful. Gizmo came to life, whirring and buzzing, until one of the motor drives let loose, and the whole contraption fell apart. We sure had a lot of fun though before we gave up and moved on to other scientific projects. We also learned a few things about working with electricity and hand tools, to say nothing of patience and tenacity.

Fast forward to September 2007. Hanson Robotics, a small engineering outfit in Richardson, TX, announced the completion this month of a five-year project to develop a robot for kids. Unlike Gizmo, borne of the sci-fi Robbie The Robot mentality of the 1950s, the Hanson Robotics machine is billed as a "lifelike robotic companion," heralding the rise of what the fledgling company calls social robots.

Boy, oh, boy.

Dubbed Zeno, the Web-enabled Hanson robot is crafted to look like a snot-nosed kid. Replete with many servo motors, saucer-shaped eyes and a boyish expression, Zeno is billed as an interactive learning companion that engages in conversation and conveys emotion through a malleable "frubber" face. Hanson says Zeno can "build a relationship with any boy."

Much of today's magnificent technology -- though it enhances communications -- tends to isolate people. Home theatres are better than going out to public movie houses, right? Why write a letter to a friend; just send a terse e-mail. Who needs to drop by for a cup of coffee, when you can videoconference sitting in front of a whiz-bang multi-GHz multimedia PC? Blog, blog, blog.

Though it should be otherwise, today's techno-centric culture engenders solitude, detachment and isolationism, and toys like the Hanson Robotics Zeno are bound to make things worse. Rather than building human relationships, machines like Zeno will teach kids they don't need real friends. In short, social robots are an unhealthy substitute for a child's natural healthy interaction with other kids.

What's more, a child playing with a Zeno robot will learn nothing about the technology behind the frubber face. If boys are still boys, and I suspect they are, some may put Zeno through the paces, and engage in a bit of disassembly and dissection when their parents aren't watching. When Zeno takes a thrashing and dies (and you can bet it will), will distraught parents stage a social robot funeral for the poor "kid?"

Hanson Robotics contends its little Zeno monsters are also about artistic expression. Regrettably, some folks agree, including the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The Zeno toy also won a Smithsonian Institution Best Design award. That's fine, if you're demonstrating technology, or creating a piece of art. But designing a surreal toy that substitutes human-to-machine relationships for the warmth of real personal contact is witless.

It would be better if Hanson Robotics offered kits that let kids build their own renditions of Zeno. They'd learn something about cooperating and working with other children. Their innate curiosity would be piqued, and they'd want to know more about the kit’s parts. They'd learn something about using their hands as well as their minds.

And what if it didn't work? Kids might learn a few lessons about failure and success, too. That would be equally as valuable as the experiences we had as kids trying to build Gizmo from tin cans and scrap wire oh so many decades ago.