Uncategorized
Brooklyn

BlabDroids: ‘robots with personality’ ask questions

A toylike device two technologists created to get people to open up for a film project might evolve into a full fledged product business with an intriguing social component online.

From the Blabdroids website. Used by permission.

When you don’t want that human touch, a robot can be a wonderful replacement. For example, if you were interviewing someone and didn’t want the person behind the camera influencing the person in front of it.

That’s why the Blabdroid project started as a way to make a film but is evolving into something much more.

The cofounders, Brent Hoff and Alex Reben, wanted to make a camera that wouldn’t need to rely on a human to prompt discussion with a human subject. The results are familiar robotics technology, with playful elements, wheels and advanced controls.

They can’t respond to questions or interpret them at all, but they do record the answers they are given. Hoff, who also works at the Made In NY Media Center to help put together programming for the space, met with Technically Brooklyn to explain more about the bots.

  • Each robot has about 16 to 20 questions loaded into it on a given outing.
  • When people pick up a Blabdroid, or look at it, the device asks them an innocent question and records the human’s response.
  • So far, they have recorded 190 hours in New York, 50 each in Miami and Los Angeles and 200 hours in Europe.

You can see a very small snippet of what they’ve gathered here:

They have found some interesting patterns. For example, as Hoff explained, one of the questions they have loaded into the robots asks who the person loves most in the world. People in Holland consistently say they love themselves, while New Yorkers say they love their mothers and people in Los Angeles won’t really answer the question.

People have been excited enough about the device that they have seen an opportunity to make a new version that they can sell. The new Blabdroid will have utility aspects to it, including Siri-like ability to answer questions about the time and the weather.

The real innovation of the new Blabdroid, though, will be the ability of owners to give the all the Blabdroids out in the world a question to ask. The user will be able to feed a question out into the cloud and it will randomly get asked by different Blabdroids everywhere. Then the person will see his or her answers and can opt whether or not to share the answers he or she gets back.

It’s like a crowdsourced, robotic answer to Mechanical Turk surveying.

Hoff explained that they want to let users keep control of as many aspects of the Blabdroid as possible. Blabdroids don’t automatically upload what they’ve recorded. Users have to attach them to the Internet and opt to do it. They can record metadata, such as location, but users can turn that off, too.

The system will be open and hackable. Users won’t have to share all the questions they get back (or any of them).

“These are basically dogs,” Hoff said, “They are tools.”

They just happen to be cute tools. The team has built about twenty bots. Two have been stolen. One was stolen by Robert de Niro at the Tribeca Film Festival, where the Blabdroid team said they were a part of one of the world’s first robot-shot documentaries. Hoff says the de Niro thing actually happened.

The Blabdroids team is looking for a developer to help create the broader online presence as the project expands. They are also seeking input on the project before going to crowdfunding. Give them feedback here.

While the Blabdroid and Toymail aren’t competing projects, we saw some interesting parallels in the idea of investing messaging systems with their own personality, and how that might change the sort of messages people sent.

Technically Brooklyn is a community level member at the Made In NY Media Center.
Companies: Made in NY Media Center

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending
Technically Media