Challenges in Human Computer Interaction: "Culture and Robots", an interview with Andrew Zoz Brooks

As a child, my first encounter with robots was through Japanese animations, in which futuristic armored exoskeletons fought against all sorts of giant evil monsters. Since then, I have always been fascinated with robots and I have wondered why they are so present in East-Asian pop culture and what their unique and distinguishable characteristics in Japan and Korea are? I have asked these question to an expert in robotics and culture, Dr. Zoz Brooks, who is also an engineer and artist from MIT Media Lab's Robotic Life group (Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, the leader of this lab, is a confirmed speaker for Robolift 2011).

Dr. Brooks has a theory to explain why robots are so vivid in Asia, in terms of pop-culture and actual research. Both Japan and Korea were destroyed after World War II. In the years after the war, these countries saw in technology the way of redemption from destruction and the possibility to protect themselves in the future; in fact, as reported later, the Americans who visited those areas were surprised at the (relatively) low level of technology for an army taking on the industrialized US war machine (refer to the Further Readings section at the end of the article). Within this framework, it is easy to see how robots could represent the ultimate technological accomplishment, the modern reincarnation of the Pygmalion myth: robots are like humans, they resemble us but they also exceed us. Hence, also the pop-culture (e.g., manga and anime) followed the same trend and built on the concept of robots as saviors from destruction, stressing on their positive connotations. On the contrary, in the West, robots have usually been perceived as socially dangerous entities if “they go bad”, as exemplified by Asimov’s work, or if they replace the human workforce; furthermore, Asian countries which did not undergo the same process of total devastation as Korea or Japan (e.g., China) have not been interested in robots until recently.

The visual look is probably the first (though not the only) distinguishable trait that sets apart Asian from Western robots. Obviously the appearance of robots is strongly influenced by the country-specific cultures: for instance, the faces of many Asian humanoid robots resembles anime characters, while the recent NASA Robonaut is instead similar to Boba Fett from Star Wars (Robonaut was not made to look like Fett, rather its design probably comes from the same root in classical armor, hence their similarity is not really a cultural accident). In general though, Asian robots tend to be prettier and cuter than their Western counterparts: a possible reason is that countries with animist histories, such as Japan, usually represent objects graphically with lifelike traits, such as faces and expressions; countries with theist histories, like the United States, do not. Another reason is that robots in Asia are often aimed at the consumer market (e.g., toys) rather than being research or military projects, and in many cases are also used as marketing and promotional tools for selling other products: hence, it is necessary that these robots look good.

The visual look of the robots, however, is only the tip of the iceberg, in the sense that the differences of appearance between Asian and Western robots can be found also in more intimate cultural differences. Those differences, though hard to enumerate, exist and contribute in creating a different perception of the services expected from the robots. In fact, the purposes of the robots and the expectations of generally what robots could or should do for the society (and their behavior/"personalities") is heavily culturally influenced as well. In Dr. Brooks’ words “ Our ideas of what robots are and what they might contribute to our societies is heavily dependent on the cultures of those societies. [...] Consider that personalities, and levels of interactivity and anthropomorphism of objects, are also heavily culturally dependent. [...] In analyzing what we should work on in robotics, then, we should first start by thinking about what we as a culture expect from them.  For example, what should they be able to do?”. It is an open question to anyone interested in culture and technology.

Suggested readings
• Peasants, Rebels, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan
• Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War
• The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindberg