Sparky and me

Turns out that Marque Cornblatt, the artist who created the telepresence robot I got to pilot, took some video of me driving Sparky around, and posted it on youtube.



The experience was really amazing. As you can see from the video, people really get into a different mindstate while talking to someone in a robotic form. They're really open and friendly and cheerful. Imagine me running up to random strangers like that and yelling "Dance with me!" and getting such an enthusiastic response.

But when I did it as a robot, they were like gleeful little children. People love robots. I think that improving this technology to the point where we can inhabit humanoid robots in other parts of the world would be really amazing. Getting the inputs good enough that you could rent a "tourist bot" and walk around a place that you can't afford to go to in reality would be quite amazing.

I had such a good time driving that little bastard around. It was dark, and the camera I was looking through was tiny, but I forced myself not to "cheat" and look to see where the robot was, but to try to see only through its eyes. With some success and some failure. But all the interacting with people was my favorite part, I just drove around and talked to people for like 30 minutes. People danced for me, people mistook me for some sort of program that was running inside the machine, and a number of other hilarious things. Hoping I can try telepresence again soon.