Robot Designer Escapes Cage of Affinity
By Peter LloydFrom the beginning of robot research and design, it seems that inventors have been caged by affinity. The idea has always been, it seems, to design human replicas—machines that look and move like us—the form for which we have the greatest affinity. Someone had to break out this design habit to create a robotic device that in many ways improves upon the human hand.
The earliest versions of robots resembled armored knights or the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. You can call it vanity or the need to play God, but I think we got stuck in the rut of mirroring ourselves, because we failed to look further than the familiar. We chose to model ourselves out of affinity.
It’s easy to understand why we still see robots with hand-like fingers at the end of arm-like limbs. Robot designers, being human, looked first to the human body for inspiration when they designed machines to do what humans do.
I wouldn’t expect inventors of the universal gripper to say it this way, but in order to leap from hand imitation to a balloon filled with coffee grounds, they have escaped the cage of affinity.
The new universal gripper probably can’t tie your shoes, play the piano, or knead bread, but it can draw. Which reminds me. I saw the great creativity writer Arthur B. VanGundy perform an experiment with a large group of people. It dramatically demonstrated how insistently our inclination to copy ourselves persists.
VanGundy asked every member of his audience to draw an extraterrestrial. Drawings complete, he asked everyone to stand. Then he said, “Anyone who drew an alien with legs, sit down.” Down went a good portion of the group. As VanGundy continued seating anyone with creatures sporting other human-like features, the remaining standees were reduced to a handful.
Out of habit, you will always look for ideas close to home. To escape this creatively debilitating cage of affinity, you must consciously force yourself beyond seeking solutions in the familiar. Otherwise your inventions, despite their technical wizardry, will end up as laughable as the slow-witted, socially crude, cigaret-smoking Electro.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.