The lighter side in robotics

Artificial Intelligence is often introduced as part of computer science. The subject requires that the audience gets impressed and will follow the ideas of serious scientific investigation. Especially, if the robotics professor explains how the inner working of a path planning algorithm or a neural network is, the students have to become calm and are not allowed to criticize anything. What professional robotics taught at the university doesn't accept at all is if something laughs about the subjects. Most robotics professors will become angry in that case.

Perhaps it is time to introduce the lighter side of robotics. The reason why is because in robotics there is a large gap between theoretical advice and practical application. In theory, robotics is great, but if a robot should proof that the technology make sense, the experiments fails. The problem is not located in Artificial Intelligence itself, but it has to do how it is perceived by the students. Selling robotics as a scientific discipline will fail but if robotics is seen as an example for a practical Joke it is a wonderful idea.

A practical joke toy is a device which doesn't make sense. The ultimate machine of Claude Shannon is an example, but flying robot drone which is equipped with a ghost costume used at a Halloween party is also a nice demonstration what Artificial Intelligence is about. Robots are not designed to help the human or increase the productivity but it's main purpose is to make a new kind of jokes.

Let us summarize what all robots from the history have in common. The shared similarity between robots is, that they didn't provide any sort of sense. These are non-sense machinery which were designed to make the people laugh about it. Most robots pretends, that they will doing serous work and are built to help the human. What the robot is doing instead is to provide a different functionality. Either the robot is broken after a short amount of time, or if the machine runs well, it will produce pure chaos. A robot is the ultimate prank-machinery, that means it was taught as a joke.

It make sense to give some details, why practical jokes were invented. Inventions like a Perpetual motion, a paradoxical stair maze and other april fools gimmicks are not built to bring academic wisdom to new heights but it's the opposite goal. The idea is to proof that the machine doesn't work, and this is perceived sometimes as funny. A robot can be sorted into the same category. It's not located in the serious science, but should be seen as a social experiment in which one side pranks the other side. The concept is not very hard to grasp. If the audience believe that the robot is real, which makes that the robot can be used in a factory or at home for serious tasks, than the prankster has won the challenge. He has tricked the audience into the desired situation.

And if the audience is able to see that the robot is a running gag, without any practical purpose. And if the audience is able to laugh about the useless toy, than the prankster has lost the challenge. The audience was smart enough to comprehend the trick. To make the amount of social interaction smaller it would be useful to label all robots under the term joke toy.