The Robot Weight Loss Coach

And then the robot will turn psychopathic and start drilling holes into your body to extract the extra fat if you are being naughty ;-)

I'm a bit doubtful that something like that could actually be helpful... but you never know! I actually wrote about this robot on my site a few weeks ago, and the source I got the information from said these robots will actually be going into a handful of homes in the Boston area soon to be tested. I'm curious how well they will go over and if people enjoy a robot questioning them about their exercise and eating habits. I heard someone say it would be like having your own personal Dr. Phil in the home! :)

This is Cory D. Kidd's work. He's a Ph.D. student getting close to graduating from the media lab. His advisor, Cynthia Breazeal, is a pioneer in studying social interaction with robots. Cynthia might be very interested in Sarah's reaction to the idea =D

Cory's working on commercializing Autom... I guess I'm happy enough with a spreadsheet. What do others think - is having a robot head that looks at your face, recognizes you, tracks you, and speaks to you something that you would find encouraging?

The personal trainer of the future?

Quito, thanks for your comments. The reason for using a robot that looks at you rather than a spreadsheet is that we, as people, have a different psychological response to something that looks at us. As compared to interacting with something on the computer screen, we find a robot to be more engaging and perceive information coming from it (in this case, suggestions on achieving or maintaining a healthy weight) to be more useful.

We have shown this in short-term studies in the lab and now have these robots in homes to test the effect over a longer period. The results will be posted on my web site in a few months.

[And for anyone following the TrendHunter link above, their story is not correct. We did some early research with the Sony Aibo, but found it to not be expressive enough. That is Sony's robot shown, not something we invented.]

Hi Cory! I was wondering how you get around the probe effect? I'd think that the fact that people are being asked to react would have a reinforcing behavior. I guess I don't see how you could do the equivalent of a double blind experiment.

We're trying to set up a robotic kiosk here in my department that interacts with visitors. I just saw a video if it being able to track people when they speak by triangulating from microphones. I'm going to be interested in seeing how people react to it. I can see that you spent a lot of thought on Autom's eyes - it's interesting to me to see how important they are in emotional contact.

If you rub shoulders with the robotics folks in EECS, please say hi to Daniela for me (she'll know me as Keith).

this robot idea is either going to hit a home run, or be a horrific failure. i personally dont need a robot to help me lose weight or to reinforce anything. thats what humans, friends and family are for.

I don't know how helpful a robot would be. It kind of freaked me out, to be honest. I think I'd rather just use a journal to record my food intake and exercise instead of having a robot talking to me. It might work for some people though. I'd be interested to see how your study went with distributing the robots in Boston. How long do the people get to keep the robots for?

Wow Cory, thanks for adding your thoughts. I think the idea has a real future. There are an enormous amount of people using some kind of device to track data (food intake etc) - however the device is impersonal, and the technology can be a barrier.

Thanks for clearing up the TrendHunter story. I couldn't make sense of it - as there was nothing at all about a "dog" on your site.

Good work. Keep it up.

I'd pretty much want one just for the sake of having a robot! :D