Transatlantic Flight

Right now I’m reading a book by Michael Erard called Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean, which begins with an interesting anecdote about Flakey, a robot developed by SRI International in the 1990s.

Flakey was mobile and could understand human speech, so you could ask him to get you a latte (or something) from down the hall, and he’d set about his mission. But, as Erard points out…

The problem was…that if you ordered Flakey to go on a mission, you didn’t know for several seconds if the robot had comprehended what you said. It would sit there, humming. So you might repeat yourself, giving Flakey two commands to process and perhaps confuse, making it stall.

So the scientists programmed Flakey to use a single, two-letter syllable to signal to his human communication partners that he understood and was processing a request.

I won’t tell you what they came up with. (I’m sure you can guess.)

I went in search of Flakey online and discovered this transcript of Alan Alda interacting with Flakey and Kurt Konolige, a computer scientist at SRI International, for an episode of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers. There’s something about reading this disembodied dialogue that’s probably even better than watching the original footage. 

Excerpt:

ALAN ALDA: Flakey, follow me.

FLAKEY: Um. Following. I don’t see you.

ALAN ALDA: There he goes… What does he say, “I do see you?”

KURT KONOLIGE: No, he says “I don’t see you,” but it’s wrong.

ALAN ALDA: He’s obviously lying.

KURT KONOLIGE: Yeah, I know. It’s going to be a little hard …

ALAN ALDA: Well, I don’t know, he doesn’t…. Flakey, stop.

FLAKEY: Um. Duh.

ALAN ALDA: Duh, that’s a great thing to say after you nearly killed me.

KURT KONOLIGE: Tell him to turn right and we’ll follow him out.

ALAN ALDA: Yeah. Flakey, turn right.

FLAKEY: Um, turning, boss.

ALAN ALDA: Turning boss. I love that boss stuff, and then he steps all over my feet.