Robot Pals

S15 E10: Alan meets Ripley — a robot that consists of an arm and a hand with eyes and that tries to understand the world around it. That world is pretty much constrained to a white tabletop, a few objects on the table and — at least while Alan is visiting — Alan's face. Ripley, like a human infant, is learning what things are, not just by giving them a name, but by experiencing them. The robot responds to Alan's request to "pick up the heavy one" by in effect weighing the two objects on the table in front of it. Two years ago Alan was present for the first public appearance of Leonardo, a robot co-designed by MIT's Cynthia Breazeal and the Hollywood special effects wizard Stan Winston. Leonardo's special talent is its cuteness, since it encourages the humans it encounters (including Alan) to want to interact with it. Since that first meeting, Leonardo has acquired the ability to learn from these interactions and, as it demonstrates, can now perform simple tasks on its own once it has been told how to do them. At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston we meet Robonaut, a robot designed to become a fully-fledged member of an astronaut team, helping to build structures in space and exploring other planets, "just like another member of the team" says Rob Ambrose, Robonaut's chief designer. We see Robonaut -- remotely controlled by a human -- as it uses the tools it would employ in space, and as it tests out a new set of wheels for its earthbound practice sessions.