Above: Andrew Olney (right) and David Hanson assemble the Philip K. Dick android at the FedEx Institute of Technology in this June 29, 2005, file photo.Down in Australia, 774 ABC Melbourne's Lindy Burns interviews David F. Dufty, an Australian who has written a new book about some cutting-edge yet quirky research that took place right here in Memphis -- and a bizarre series of events that followed.
Dufty's "Lost in Transit: The Strange Story of the Philip K. Dick Android" tells the story of an award-winning robotics project undertaken in the early and mid-2000s by software programmer Andrew Olney and sculptor/hardware designer David Hanson in a collaborative effort with the University of Memphis' FedEx Institute of Technology and other research centers. Olney and Hanson, working on developing a fully functional human-like android, decided to base the machine's personality and likeness on that of cult-favorite science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, whose paranoid stories of dystopian futures have been adapted into such films as "Blade Runner," "Total Recall" and the recent "Adjustment Bureau."
In a story in The Commercial Appeal from July 2005 (not available online, but I've pasted it to the jump of this post), Olney, a native Memphian and PhD candidate at the time, described the "phildickian" automaton like this: "It's an interactive robotic sculpture. You can talk to it. If you ask it long-winded Philip K. Dick kinds of questions, it'll come back with real Philip K. Dick kinds of responses, a lot of times drawing from interviews, speeches and stuff like that."
The following January, someone transporting the robot's head to Google headquarters in California lost the bag in which he was carrying it. The head never again turned up.
Working on a postdoctoral fellowship at the U of M, Dufty had struck up a friendship with the robotics crew there. As he told Burns:
"They were doing amazing stuff in conversational artificial intelligence and other things like that. And I just happened to know some guys who were key in this project to kind of reincarnate Philip K. Dick the science-fiction writer as an android. And i saw the whole thing take place, and it was just an amazing series of events."Dufty called the decision to model the android after Dick, whose stories often involve future societies in which humans and androids live among one another, "stroke of genius."
"It was kind of a bit of a stunt, but it was really just a way of giving form to something they were gonna do anyway: 'Let's actually make it Philip K. Dick, make the android think it's Philip K. Dick, and wouldn't that be totally cool,' and it was.
July 3, 2005
The author of the science fiction classic "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" died 23 years ago, so we can't ask Philip K. Dick how he'd fancy an android version of himself.
Then again, in a sci-fi meets sci-fact sort of way, we can.
Behold the robotic representation of the man whose writings inspired such movies as "Blade Runner, " "Minority Report" and "Total Recall." With a startlingly lifelike bearded face, human mannerisms and a head full of "phildickian, " as aficionados say, thoughts and notions, he's on display through next Friday at the University of Memphis FedEx Institute of Technology.
"The way I like to talk about it is, it's art, " said Andrew Olney, 28, a native Memphian and U of M PhD student who developed the robot's software.
"It's an interactive robotic sculpture. You can talk to it. If you ask it long-winded Philip K. Dick kinds of questions, it'll come back with real Philip K. Dick kinds of responses, a lot of times drawing from interviews, speeches and stuff like that."
The robot - whose human subject also wrote a novel called "We Can Build You" - is a partnership of the FedEx Institute of Technology, Dallas-based Hanson Robotics and the University of Texas's Automation and Robotics Research Institute.
"It's a pretty big leap (in robotic technology), " said David Hanson, 35, founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics and the creator/artist behind the robot hardware. "There was unveiled about five weeks ago in Japan a robot that's a receptionist. But what we've done is put deep semantic artificial intelligence behind (the PKD android), so that it can assemble new responses on the fly.
"And, also, we put advanced computer vision with our robot so that it can recognize faces. It would call you by name when it sees you."
The PKD android project, which has the blessing of the late author's family, was completed in about seven months, on a five-figure "shoestring" budget benefiting from volunteer labor and donated materials. It was featured at last weekend's Wired magazine NextFest in Chicago, where one media report called it "the most lifelike robot on display."
He smiles. His skin crinkles. He shows disappointment and wide-eyed surprise. Imagine a wax museum figure come to life - speaking not stock programmed lines, but drawing on thousands of pages of the subject's writings and interviews.
"There's so much material in there, that I have no idea what it's going to say, " said Olney, a fan of Dick's writings.
Some of what the PKD robot says is stream of consciousness - a brain playing tag with its memory banks, sometimes to strange ends.
But then, as Olney said, Dick was given to the "massive tangent" when talking and was, late in his life, "pretty much wigging out" with visions and contact with supernatural forces.
So along with being a leap into the future, the robotic Philip K. Dick is another sort of trip.
Like when he's asked whether, you know, androids dream of electric sheep.
He starts talking in a robotic version of breathless about the subject, telling you about a robot sheep on top of a building, looking so real it fools the neighbors.
"When an electronic animal begins to malfunction it makes noises like a real animal, like it gurgles and wheezes and moans and then its eyes roll up, you know, " says Sci-Phil, who isn't much on pauses or punctuation, "and it acts like it's a sick real animal so even when your animal malfunctions and it's electric, you know, it still looks like it's a sick animal."
The PKD android also can curse, get snotty with you, and then crack you up (i.e., a reference to "Snoopy in his dog house" after a question about God).
Then again, ask this bearded robot in the powder-blue shirt and blue corduroys its name and it says, "My name is Phil."
So the future of robotics, perhaps, has a name. The question is: How soon does this future arrive, and how far might it go?
An android Muddy Waters, singing "Mannish Boy" down on Beale Street? Android playmates for our kids? Android college professors? Um, android newspaper reporters?
"My prediction will be that by 2010, robots will be heavily commercialized, " Olney said. "You'll see them a lot in entertainment, and as toys.
"But in terms of having a robot that can in any way approach what a person does, in terms of creativity and stuff like that, I think you're in the 100 or 200 years kind of range."
Olney, a friendly sort with a goatee and a pierced lip, seems to know where we're going with this. He knows we've seen entirely too many Hollywood movies and are wondering, well, if androids really dream of ... world domination.
"Everyone can relax, " he said with a smile. "Have a giggle out of them, because there's nothing to worry about."
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