🤖 I’m reading about weak robots (Panasonic also made a “farting cat robot” called Nicobo), and I’m loving the idea:

Exposing “weaknesses” instead of hiding them inside creates a space for connection in a relationship. Furthermore, it creates a relationship in which both parties can compensate for each other’s imperfections and draw out each other’s strengths. The “weak robots” prove this, says Okada, and the same principle applies in human-to-human relationships.

“However, we have always lived in a society that encourages people to be self-sufficient, so it is difficult for us to show our weaknesses. Still, sometimes a weakness can turn into a strength when we expose it and trust the other party. I hope that ‘weak robots’ will serve as a model for restoring rich and flexible relationships to society, and will help loosen the intolerance that exists in the world.”

“Weakness” dissolves hierarchical relationships and the boundaries of doer and receiver, and in this sense, it is a “strength” that enriches the relationship. The “weak robots” taught me the essence of what we should aim for in a diverse society.

Also love the idea of soft robots like . They’re such a refreshing take on robots, as opposed to the dystopian humanoid robots that the big tech companies seem like to be striving for 😬 This rabbit hole started from seeing a Megatron transforming robot, which initially triggered all my dormant “thats, so cool!” childhood dreams - but seeing it fail at a few voice commands, and being quite unnatural outside of the preprogrammed/animated tasks^, I was yearning for better forms of robotics. About 7 yrs ago, I thought cozmo/vector, had potential, esp with their team’s ex-pixar experience, but these products seem to have become hollowed out after running out of startup cash and being sold off 😢 The programming aspects of these consumer robots are pretty disappointing too - mainly relying on block based programming, which seems quite primitive compared to what the hardware is capable of. I guess the more modern approach is to use some blend of ChatGPT-esque interface, but that’s quite clunky too. Anyone know of any delightful programming interfaces for robots? Or other interesting alternatives to the Terminator style robots coming out? --- ^ To be fair, when it worked, it was amazing 😍 They even got the original voice actors, to add to the nostalgia value.