It was not so long ago that I was pointing out the potential pitfalls of our ever-growing obsession with digital (read: impersonal) forms of communication. Whether its sending emails, texts, instant messages or even making phone calls, we seem to be gravitating more and more towards the conveniences of communication that involve us not actually looking a person in the eye. That is, until now.
This article on the PopSci front page talks about an upcoming line of robots that act as conversation surrogates. The Telenoid R1, as it’s being referred to, is a bare essentials humanoid with an emphasis on facial definition to make it look more human-like (or creepy, depending on how you look at it).
The idea of Telenoid R1 is to capture a user’s voice and facial movements from one side of a computerised conversation and then mimic/transmit them (including the voice of the sender) to the recipient. The recipient can then see/hear the facial expressions of their friend/family member/whoever as they communicate with them/Telenoid R1 in real time.
While this robot has evidently been designed to somewhat bridge the impersonal nature of digital ‘by-proxy’ communication, for me, it’s a step in the wrong direction. On one hand, this is an acknowledgement of the impersonal nature of such communication (why else would such a surrogate need to be created?) and thus inherently acts as an encouragement of continuing down the path of impersonal methods of communication.
On the other hand, the half human/half something else composition of Telenoid R1 is a creepy effigy that’s so generic in design that it negates the human substitution status it seems to be searching for, and I feel it would only serve to create a greater void between two parties communicating by way of this conversation surrogate.
What do the rest of you think?
(I’ve also embedded the video from the original article below to give you a better idea of how the Telenoid R1 robot functions.)
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Wow… that is super creepy. Just reminds me of the “human” mascot from ‘Community’ that is so PC it doesn’t even resemble a person anymore!
Anyway, I agree with you that it is still encouraging people to communicate from afar… I really can’t see how a robot surrogate is supposed to fill the void of a person? It really doesn’t bridge that gap at all. Maybe they should be focusing on improving video chat?
@ Muffin - I know what you’re talking about! I’ve touched on a similar topic in an earlier post, but it seems to be encouraging people to move away from in-person communication. As soon as conversation switches to impersonal means, the likelihood of ambiguity and subsequent misunderstandings increases. Phone calls don’t allow you to gauge someone’s reactions by way of physical gestures/facial cues, while removing voice altogether means that tone of voice isn’t there to guide your recipient’s understanding of your intent.