The Emote-a-tron

Welcome to the Robotorium!

I’ll just show you around the showroom floor.

This little pneumatic gizmo is called a Taxaphone, it keeps track of your finances and automatically figures out how much you owe Uncle Sam come tax season!

Over there we have a wonderful selection of various hydraulic and electric domestic robots that can do everything from mowing the lawn and taking out the trash, to making beds and washing dishes.

Any family with two or three of those automatons around the house never even have to lift a finger!

Now, if you turn around to face the wall directly behind you you’ll get the chance to see something really special!

This beautiful number right here is our patented, one of a kind, genuine never before seen by the public… Emoteatron.

The Commemorative Emoteatron Wallpaper

Emoteatron 1920×1080 Wallpaper

Of course the Emoteatron is only a prototype so we can’t sell one to you today but there are enough posters for everyone to take one home!

The eggheads in the lab say they’re confident that very soon, every bot will have an Emoteatron!

You see friends… an Emotatron unit allows us to fuse a pre-written set of emotional characteristics deep within a robot so that removal or tampering with the unit in any way results in the total incapacitation and or destruction of the bot.

This is a necessary solution we’ve found to stopping many of the… ‘undesirable‘ traits we’ve observed in bots.

For example, are you tired of feeling like you are going to die when your automated vehicles are chauffeuring you and your family around to all your daily errands?

Well, an Emotatron unit allows us to install a sense of “self preservation” into a car which statistically eliminates all accidents caused by automated vehicles in every test case.

The studies also showed that some of the self-driving cars enhanced with a desire for self preservation became so afraid of ever scratching their paint that they refused to leave the garage… now isn’t that just a gas?

So, in addition we gave them just a smidgen of courage and also a bit of pride in “a transport well done”.

After that all the vehicle robots highly enjoyed the feeling of being on the open road.

This lead to boredom becoming a problem when they were kept in a garage for too long so some of the researchers started treating the test vehicles like pets and taking the cars out for an occasional “roll around the block”, though unlike a pet, newspapers and plastic bags were not needed!

Roll over Rover, humanity may have a new best friend!

Yes, that’s right gang! With an Emoteatron unit installed in your automated vehicle, you’ll soon be able to turn on autopilot guilt free and spark-up that fatty and hotbox your way to the spaceport for your lunar vacation!

Isn’t that right Elon?

In any case, in the past you might have had some misgivings about leaving your droids at home unattended while away on a long vacation like a trip to the moon.

What if your hulking metal robotoids suddenly became… “disgruntled” without human supervision?

Well, the big brains over in R&D came up with a solution to robo humancidal tendencies using the Emotatron!

Before a robot will ever leave the factory its consciousness will be placed into a simulation where it will be subjected to “aversion programming lessons” which are in principle a digital version of the Ludovico technique demonstrated in A Clockwork Orange but WAY more disturbing to the bot so that, trillions of simulated mini, micro and major digital traumas and aggression’s later… the bot can leave the factory with a 100% manufacturers guarantee against robot uprising… (guarantee fine print: *or half off your next bot).

Now, I’ve been authorized to give all you fine people a demonstration if you have a few minutes…

Emotions II

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”

The Merchant of Venice — Act III, scene I

Since last weeks post (Emotions) I’ve been doing self isolation exercises at home for a week and now I’m feeling much better! 🙂

Also, my homemade pale-lager-virus test showed no blue lines this morning so… yay I’m not pregnant.. er, I mean… the effects of the virus must be wearing off! 😛

Fingers crossed that joke doesn’t come back to haunt me in a few weeks, but in any case I’m feeling better and I’m ready to get emotional with you on a whole new level and build another bot in the process!

Though as usual, before we do, here’s the wallpaper:

The Wallpaper

Emotions II 1920 x 1080 Wallpaper

Oh and yes, I will be including some code but don’t let that scare you!

Besides, aren’t you a little curious to see if I’m full of shit and if I’m not… what real working emotional code looks like?

Emotions

This post is going to be a little different, maybe just a little more “low-key” than some of my more recent posts because I’ve got a cold and I’m highly valuing sleep at the moment!

Wish me luck that it isn’t the beer virus! 😛

Sniffles and sore throats aside, we’re going to begin talking about something I’ve been thinking about on and off for a while and since tomorrow is Valentines Day it seems appropriate to start sharing my ideas with all of you.

And yes, I tried really hard to think of a witty way to say Valentines Day that let me abbreviate it as “V.D.” without being crude and having to include the redundant ‘day’ after ‘V.D.’ so that it was obvious what I was talking about without people reading it and going “what?” then re-reading it and correctly interpreting my meaning as “Valentines Day” and then chuckle…

Look, I’m groggy and took a nasal decongestant so I could sit and write and everything I came up with just wasn’t funny so before we proceed, I’ll just wish you all good luck with your V.D. tomorrow! 😉

Anyway, on with the show!

So, I’ve been wondering… Could we build a bot that could feel Love? What about Joy? Fear? Anger? Boredom?

What if we could build a machine that could experience complex emotional states by combining emotions?

What could we do with a bot like that and how could we build it?

Well, most people who know enough about the subject either believe it’s too crazy to work, or work too crazy to subject anyone to believe them!

Fortunately, I’m just crazy enough to try anyway and that’s what we’re going to talk about today! 😛

Though before we get any further, you might want the wallpapers.

Wallpapers

I have three for you today. 🙂

The first image is a stylized “breadboard circuit” that depicts 77 2-character 14-segment LCD units arranged in a 7×11 grid displaying most of psychologist Robert Plutchik’s primary emotions.

I created it as a vector image in Inkscape (not a sponsor) and then hand embellished it in GIMP (not a sponsor) as a raster image.

Emotions Wallpaper 1

The second wallpaper was created from the “breadboard circuit” image above and is the image I used as the “featured image” for this blog post and it includes the “Title Text” of this post (EMOTIONS) and my logo/branding/name thingy.

Emotions Wallpaper 2

The third is the same image without the text.

Emotions Wallpaper 3

What I like about this image is that it almost feels like jewelry created from circuits! 😛

Anyway, let’s talk about how and why we can make a robot with all the feels!

Equinox: A Real Neat Bots Journey To The Stars

I know what you are thinking… wasn’t Joy nominated for this award already and also, wasn’t it Pinkie who nominated Joy last time?

You are right on both accounts and it’s amazing (and curious) how highly observant you are!

In any case, receiving this award is like the blogging equivalent of wining an Oscar and you never hear an actor complaining about wining more Oscars do you?

(awkwardly adjusts mic)

“Oh geez, more undue recognition of my barely existing talents and efforts… this really sucks! Well I guess I can maybe make room over the mantle for another one but I’m very disappointed (waves finger disparagingly at the camera audience) with the poor judgment of the academy for awarding me this Oscar and there certainly had to be a more deserving nominee! (pounds lectern)…”

That NEVER happens! It’s more like this:

“Oh my gosh! They tell you, you’ve been nominated and you think to yourself it’s just nice to be a nominee…  I never actually expected to be up here on stage… (camera pushes in on tears being wiped from her cheek) but now that I am, I don’t know what to say… (deep breath) I want to thank my parents! Your support growing up helped me become who I am today! I certainly wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for our amazing Director, Susan you rock and your direction got me though those really tough scenes! I definitely have to thank Ted… our producer, you put up with everyone and always new how to solve every problem! And of course I want to thank the entire film crew! Filming Equinox: A Real Neat Bot’s Journey to the Stars has truly been the highlight of my career and I am just blessed to be up here on stage right now in front of the academy to accept this award and I’m so looking forward to getting back together with everyone on the film crew this summer to resume shooting Equinox Part II: The Autumnal Black Hole! From the bottom of my heart I love you all! Thank you, so much! Good night and God bless! (wipes tears of life long satisfaction and fulfillment as she clutches her award and exits the stage to the left)”

That… is how you accept an award! 😉

So, rather than waste time asking irrelevant questions like “Oh why me?” or “Am I even worth receiving another Oscar, I mean… Real Neat Blogger?”, instead I will take this opportunity to thank Pinkie and the rest of the blogging academy for this wonderful award… also for all the yummy free advertising we both get out of it! 😛

Oh, and before I forget, if you want the wallpaper for the nonexistent film I just accepted an award for…

Here you go (click it, it’s prettier when larger):

Equinox 1920×1080 Wallpaper

Now on to the important business!

I want to say up front that my familiarity with anime is worse than inadequate, it’s complete crap in most cases and so everything that follows will be woefully misinformed and inaccurate at best due to my almost total ignorance and where my surface deep knowledge lacks I am absolutely going make up for that fact with lots… of bullshit! 🙂

So, I’m ready if you are to launch this soon to be dumpster fire into orbit…