“We want people to wear the robots”

Discover the cutting-edge world of soft robotics and wearable technology, as Dr Awesome discusses their potential to revolutionize healthcare, human performance, and daily life with Kris Dorsey, Associate Professor in the Center for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University.

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The Future Of Wearable Technology – A Conversation with Kris Dorsey

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Futurist Society, where, as always, we are talking in the present, but talking about the future. Today I have a really special guest, her name is Kris Dorsey, and she’s an associate professor in the Center for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University. Thank you so much for joining us, Khris!

I know that you are in the same Boston area and we kind of have a lot of interesting things that are happening in this locale in regards to robotics. But tell us what you’re doing right now and how it’s going to affect us in the future.

Well, thanks so much for having me on your show.

My lab works on different kinds of robots that are made out of fabrics, silicone, rubber… we want them to be soft. We want people to wear the robots, wearable robotics. We also want to design robots that can do different things than metal-based or other rigid robots can

Benefits and Limitations of Today’s Consumer Wearables

Cool. So I know that part of the work that you’re doing overlaps with wearable technology and that’s something that I’m a huge proponent of. I have an Apple watch. I actually have two Apple watches. And as soon as I take one off the charger, I put the other one back on because I’m still interested in just documenting everything.

I never would have thought that we would be living in this world where every one of us has this strapped to ourselves, almost like another appendage. Where do you see us going with this kind of technology? Like, are we going to be wearing, you know, robotic shirts? Are we going to be having other sensing capabilities? What have you noticed on the cutting edge that’s coming up?

Yeah, I would love for us to all have robotic shirts in the future. Maybe they help us out with particular tasks when we’re getting tired or help kind of keep our posture right during the day.

One of the things that I find really exciting about the expansion of wearable devices is that they let us ask and answer so many questions about ourselves. I think that the more that we think about what those wearable devices look like and what they’re measuring, outside of an Apple watch or something else that’s just sitting on your wrist, the more questions that we can ask and answer. I think that’s so cool!

Wearable devices let us ask and answer so many questions about ourselves

So specifically about that, when you’re asking and answering questions, a lot of it relies on the sensor technology that we have, right? And with sensor technology, I think, what we’re able to pick up these days is pretty amazing. Like my Apple watch is now able to detect sleep apnea, not maybe as accurate as having a home sleep study, but still enough that it would be concerning.

What do you see in regards to sensor technology that’s being incorporated more and more? You know, the leaps and bounds we’ve made in the last 10 years have really surprised me, but I’d love to hear what’s more interesting to you and also what’s coming down the pipeline.

So I think that things with sensors and with signal processing that are really interesting is in the size of a smartwatch or in the size of a phone, you can have all of these sensors packed in that tell you about your heart rate, tell you about your environment, you know, were you in a really noisy room that day or did you get a lot of noise experience that day.

Where I would like to see the future go is in figuring out how you can go from sensors that are really portable, really easy to carry with you, to taking some of that data and then using it to maybe have… so for your example of sleep apnea, if your watch says you have sleep apnea you will probably go get a sleep study.

So I’m really excited about this future where the sensors kind of promote us to the next step, where we can get access to more high fidelity sensors. Or that the sensors that we carry around with us all the time are better at picking out some of that data, better at getting those trends and doing things like picking up sleep apnea.

I hope to live in that future also, but I just don’t know what the capabilities are right now, even. And also what the potential is to come in the future. Like, for example, me, I just started on this fitness journey and there are so many different wearable technologies that could help me. You have like the Fitbit, you have the Oura Ring, you have the Whoop strap. How is someone who is kind of a lay person able to kind of piece together what is best for them?

So I think with all of the sensors there is some challenge with accuracy. It’s not always going to perfectly tell you your heart rate or perfectly tell you your stress level, but they’re really good at helping people figure out trends. So, for example, if I make sure that I get into bed every night by 10:30, over time does that help me reduce my stress level or not?

Where I worry about these wearables is on a day to day basis where people can become a little obsessive about, “Oh, did I get my step count in today?”, “My stress level is higher.”, because the sensors don’t have quite that level of precision yet. And also people are so variable from day to day. So I’m excited for a balance between wearables helping people over time figure out what works best for them, but without it kind of controlling or causing anxiety in people’s behavior.

I’m excited for a balance between wearables helping people over time figure out what works best for them, but without it kind of controlling or causing anxiety in people’s behavior.

So, with particular technology, so Fitbit versus an Apple Watch versus anything else, I think all of them have advantages and disadvantages that are much more related to: Are you going to wear it? What’s the battery life? What is the data visualization that you’re looking at? Most of the sensors are going to tell you about the same things, about the same trends. So it’s kind of like, how do you incorporate all of that data that you’re getting from your wearable into what you want to do next with that data?

I really think that that’s something that I’m actually probably on the obsessive side now. Like I’m going a little bit overboard with all of the different things that are available to me. Right now I’m thinking about getting one of those continuous blood glucose monitors just to see what my metabolism is.

It’s a novelty now, right? It’s something that I didn’t even think about five years ago. So it’s nice to hear that there’s still a place for traditional testing… like if you’re going into a physician, this is something that might tell you a trend and then say, Hey, you should really get this checked out… but also that it’s accurate enough that I can kind of use it as a baseline to my own health.

Do you use any wearables yourself? Do you incorporate them into your own life?

Yes. So I have a wearable and I’ve also tried a continuous glucose monitor. My family has a history of high blood sugar and so I just wanted to see how things were going.

To that point, one of the well known challenges with continuous glucose monitors is something called a compression low. If you have the glucose monitor, for example, on your arm and then you press on your arm somehow, it’s not getting the flow of the interstitial fluid and so it reads that your blood sugar is very, very low. The alarm goes off, the wearer might panic. And so knowing that that’s a thing and like, “Oh, the reason that your blood glucose monitor went off and said your blood sugar is very low is because you were lying on the couch and you need to roll over”, that’s a very different thing than, “Oh my gosh, you’re, you’re having a crisis. You need to take care of that.”

Right.

Yeah.

What is the wearable? Do you have an Apple watch or what do you like to use?

Um, I have a Whoop.

Okay. And what made you go with that versus your Apple watch?

So one of the advantages that I saw of the Whoop is that it doesn’t have a screen. I was a little bit concerned myself about obsessively checking something. You know, am I getting my steps in? Am I hitting my goals? So something I really liked about the Whoop is it doesn’t have a screen. I have to go look at my phone and check the app and see what the data looks like. So that keeps me from either checking all of my phone alerts all of the time or seeing if I’ve closed my rings or something like that.

And as someone who’s a physician, do you see this stuff being incorporated more and more into healthcare? Is this something that is just going to become more and more integrated? Or do you think it’s going to go in a different direction where it’s going to be more self-actualization, like what we’re doing right now?

Like I went out and found a blood glucose monitor independent of a physician. So the majority of the health information that I’m tracking I don’t really share with my doctor. But I feel like there should be a little bit more connective tissue between health monitoring and health care. But I’m not sure if that’s something that is continuing or something that you might have seen, so what do you think that that’s going to be like?

That’s a really good question. Certainly I have seen more willingness personally with my physicians for me to say, “Hey, here are my data, here are the trends that I’m seeing. I have this particular goal. Help me out.” But I don’t know if there is going to be the same… because it seems like what physicians are looking at and what the data that we can get from wearables tell us, with the exception of things like continuous glucose monitors. They’re telling us different sets of information.

So I agree that there is a little bit of a lack of a bridge or connective tissue, as you said, between maybe what your physician would want to know about your health to diagnose a particular condition or monitor a particular condition and what you might be able to extract, the trends or the data that you might be able to interpret from something like an Apple watch.

So, where that goes, I think that’s going to require a bit of envisioning of what the health care system and treatment and how much time doctors have to spend with us. You know, I would want someone, if they were looking at data to look through it carefully, particularly if you’re looking at trends over time, rather than try to make a snap diagnosis or a snap judgment.

There is a little bit of a lack of a bridge or connective tissue between what your physician would want to know about your health and what you might be able to extract from something like an Apple watch.

Figuring out how to take the existing workflow and electronic health records and everything else and then incorporating something like Apple watch data into it is a process that I think is going to take many years to really get right.

Performance vs Healthcare Applications

So I look at it more as like performance right now and less so healthcare. And I wonder how much spillover you have into healthcare, that you’re seeing.

For example, a blood glucose monitor is very significant for healthcare for someone who has type one diabetes. They don’t have the ability to produce insulin and so you have to track that.

Healthcare, to me, right now in the U.S. Is more like sick care. So you’re trying to prevent these relatively rare but devastating complications. Like someone has a blood glucose that bottoms out and they could be driving and cause an accident or they could even have some sort of neurologic sequelae by the blood glucose getting so low.

And so it’s very important for that person to have a blood glucose monitor that monitors them. I’m sure that their physician is tracking it. And then you have this other subset of people like you and me who are doing it more as like a preventative measure. Like I’m doing it for performance also, I want to make sure that my blood glucose is not getting so low that I become sleepy during surgery or something like that.

So, right now, I feel like there’s two distinct camps, and I wonder how much crossover you see. Or maybe your students are working to connect those two things. Or if there’s any type of sensing technology that is connecting them right now, other than these kind of like one offs. Like sleep apnea or right now the Apple watch is also having like a new algorithm for arrhythmias. You know, if you have a certain type of cardiac arrhythmia, contact your physician.

But I feel like there’s two distinct camps. There’s performance and there’s health care. Do you also feel like that? Or do you have a different view on it?

I think yes, and I think that’s because the things that a smart watch can tell you are largely related to performance. You can get some information about cardiac changes, some information about sleep, and I think that that’s because that’s where the market is. It’s not a medical device in the same way that other wearable sensors that we might have are.

Bridging the Gap

One of the things that some of my students and I are working on is something that sits a little bit in between these two camps, like you were saying. So one of the things that we’re interested in is in monitoring peripheral edema or fluid swelling.

Yeah.

So this is a performance issue. You see athletes wearing things like compression garments, or particular sleeves or socks all the time if they’re performance athletes. But it’s also a huge challenge in conditions like lymphedema and chronic venous insufficiency, where people may retain fluid over time and it’s an indicator of a worsening health problem.

We’re making these sorts of devices out of fabric. They look much more like a shirt or a sleeve than they do an Apple watch but we are hoping that they will be sort of this bridge between health and performance in that way, because it’s answering a question about this condition edema that’s related to both.

Soft Robotics

That’s cool. I’m glad you talked about that because I did want to talk with you a little bit about soft robotics. Personally, a lot of the inspiration that I draw from, just being interested in technology in general, comes from science fiction. And like the lowest hanging fruit for 80s babies like me for wanting something from science fiction was exosuits. Like the ability to put on some sort of shirt and then be able to control this giant robot that like makes you 80 feet tall and you’re able to fight monsters, right?

Now I think that there’s a lot of hype with Neuralink and like that connection to be able to control things. But in science fiction, there was always like this shirt that you would wear and it would translate your bodily movements into the bodily movements of this robot.

I wonder, you know, how much of that is going on, because that’s something that I would like. That kind of future is something that gets people excited about.

So are you guys doing anything like that?

So that’s not quite what we work on. Well, we work on the sensors that would make that sort of vision possible rather than the robots themselves. And I don’t think we’re five or 10 years away from mech suits, but I am finding, in the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of really exciting work in exosuits and exoskeletons for physical rehabilitation, where we’re seeing these move from the lab into clinical practice.

There’s this new startup that came out of stealth mode earlier this year called Skip.

What is stealth mode?

Oh, like they’re now offering their product.

Oh, gotcha. Okay.

Yeah, so this company Skip makes a pair of robotic hiking pants. It looks like a normal pair of hiking pants, but it has an actuator joint, a joint with a motor in it at the knee – I think there might also be one at the hip, but certainly one at the knee. And their vision is, folks who love to hike that may have knee pain or are maybe going on a more challenging hike than they’ve become accustomed to can take this pair of pants with them on the trail and go for longer and further than they would by themselves and see more of the world.

That’s awesome. You know, when you look at a 1960s astronaut suit, that’s performance inhibiting, right? I’m looking for suits and wearable technology that’s performance advancing. And I know it’s available in rehab because I have a few friends who are physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians. They know that it’s available for stroke patients and people who are doing that kind of stuff, but I can’t wait until it comes down to the consumer.

I can’t wait until I have the ability to have some sort of suit like that that’s able to allow me to pick up things that I otherwise would not be able to pick up or go for longer distances. And we’re just seeing that, is that correct?

Yeah. I think this is really something that has been a vision for… like you said, I’m also an 80s baby and it’s been out there for a long time. And really in the last five years, I would say, we’re going from the vision to people are making this sort of stuff.
There also came out, about three years ago, something called HeroWear. It’s a little passive exosuit, so it’s not powered, but it kind of moves energy as you’re standing to picking something up that takes a lot of the load off your back. So I thought that was really cool and innovative and because it’s passive, you don’t have to worry about batteries, you don’t have to worry about motors. Just through these elastic bands and where it’s placed on the back, it can give you a lot of that benefit anyway.

Yeah, no, I think even that is something that’s a future that I’m really excited about. And I can’t wait until it gets out in the pipeline because people are living longer and they want to have the same kind of mobility and health ability that they had when they were younger. And so I think that this would be a nice adjunct for human performance that maybe it’s not available now, but it might be available in the next decade.

Uh, just one quick double click on that, when we’re talking about this ability for us to augment. Is there any sort of ability right now for haptic technology, for the hands that has the ability to look and feel and translate movement like in a telerobotic sense? We have this surgical robotics available right now in surgery and it’s very limiting… again it’s performance diminutive, like in the same analogy with the 1960s space suit.

People are living longer and they want to have the same kind of mobility and health ability that they had when they were younger

Like if I were to use robotics now, in my opinion and this is debatable, surgical robotics to me is not additive. It might take away a little bit of an incision, it might take away a little bit of visibility if you go to a human being, but certainly like a human being is going to outperform that surgical robotics nine times out of ten.

I wonder if anything is coming down the pipeline with even just the ability to translate hand movement to have a similar experience with, maybe not an entire mecha suit, but just limited to the hands. Is there anything that’s going on in that type of technology?

So the pieces, I think, are there but assembling them into a cohesive whole isn’t yet. Hands are incredible. The number of degrees of freedom and the different ways that we can move fingers, not to mention the sensitivity that we have in our fingertips is just not something that a robot can replicate yet in the same way that we can with like a knee joint. Which, in terms of what you’re asking it to do is a much simpler motion than I’m going to pick up something and twist it, or I’m going to use the scalpel and make an incision. So I don’t want to say that it’s not something… I think it is something that we’ll get to eventually but I think it is much further along the horizon than something like an exosuit in everyday life.

Haptic Technology

Uh, what about haptic technology in general? Is it able to replicate sensations the way that our fingertips are, or are we still far away from that?

So haptic technology is something that is also growing by leaps and bounds. But I think it’s another one of those challenges that because there’s so much going on is really hard.

So when you touch something, you get the texture. You also get the temperature change, how fast the material is moving heat from your hand out into the environment. You might also have some sort of sensation of like moisture or airflow or other things. And so just incorporating all of that into a really small package that replicates touch in a believable way is super challenging. 

I understand that it’s challenging. I guess my question is, all of these technologies, are they moving exponentially the same way that optics is moving exponentially? Because what we’re able to achieve right now with like augmented reality, I never would have guessed that like five years ago or ten years ago.

They just made these huge leaps and bounds on even just like spatial orientation. In surgery right now, we have the ability to do surgical navigation so I can tell exactly where I am. I never thought that we would have that five years ago, and here we are. In large part because it’s moved exponentially.

Are all these other technologies that we’re talking about moving at the same rate? Because I feel like that’s something that I’ve noticed. Not all technologies move at the same rate. For example, genetics for 20 to 30 years was moving very linearly and it’s only relatively recently where we’ve had this huge upswing in what we’re able to achieve with that sort of biotechnology.

With wearable technology, with soft robotics, it’s, like you were saying, a lot of different pieces and each one of those… I’m just not sure how it’s moving.

Yeah, I would say not yet exponential growth or we’re at the part of the exponential growth that looks linear.

I think, particularly with haptics, one of the challenges is integrating a lot of different actuators into a really, really small package. Small enough that it is the same size as the density of your ability to sense with your fingertips. There’s been a huge exponential growth in microscale sensors generally, in increasing that sensor density. And so I think some of that is going to translate into haptics, but you also need to figure out different ways to bring those existing actuators in and get that haptic stimulation with the power, with the signal density, all of that. And so that’s why I say we’re not quite in the exponential growth phase yet.

Unique Challenges of Soft Robotics

Yeah. Well, I hope that we get there soon. I mean, regardless, I think robotics is increasing exponentially. I mean, I see these humanoid robots that are coming out of like Boston Dynamics and, you know, even Tesla. How much of that is translating to what you do in the soft robotics field?

I would say that there’s a lot of work in soft robotics that is very much materials, chemistry, mechanisms… and now we’re really excitingly starting to see this fusion between approaches that have worked really well. So computer vision or localization or other things like that in traditional robotics and bringing those into soft robotics to really get the benefits of both.

One of the challenges though is if you’re trying to control something that doesn’t necessarily have a good model for how it’s going to deform or how it’s going to move, it’s a lot harder to take these existing approaches and apply them to that problem.

So I think that’s why there hasn’t been just like, “Oh, I’m going to take this knowledge and bring it over here.” It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to take this knowledge and then think really hard and think about how to revise it. Okay. Now I can apply it to this problem in soft robotics.”

Hmm.

So that’s where I think the really cool exciting nerdy stuff is. But at the same time that means that, you know, Baymax and other sorts of like squishy healthcare robots are not two years down the road.

Yeah, and kudos to Disney for even coming up with that, right? Like, I mean, it seems so near. You see that movie and you’re like, “Okay, inflatable. I get that.” You know, like you see, Boston Dynamics robots able to walk by themselves and it seems like we’re just so close to that future. Just like the imagination that that movie captured, I was really impressed by.

Sources of Inspiration

What other examples from science fiction and technology do you think are low hanging fruit that we’re like almost there? What are people excited about in your classrooms? Because I’m sure that students are seeing these types of pop culture examples and they’re like, “I want to do that. I want to do that.”

Hmm. That’s a good question. And I would love to come back to that, but on the Disney example…

Yeah.

I just want to go back to it because it’s one of my favorite stories in all of soft robotics.

Disney wanted to tour the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon and get ideas for movies. And they saw this robot, I believe it was in Chris Atkinson’s lab, where they were using this inflatable arm to feed someone. And they said, “That’s really cool. We’re going to take this.” They made Baymax and now Baymax has inspired a whole new generation of soft roboticists. So there’s this really cool feedback loop, I think, between robotics and technology inspiring science fiction, which then inspires the technologists. I just get really excited about seeing that interplay between the two.

There’s this really cool feedback loop between robotics and technology inspiring science fiction, which then inspires the technologists.

Yeah.

Where do I think my students are going to go in the future? What is the low hanging fruit? Um, I think some of the low hanging fruit is integrating sensors into clothing. So maybe you might want to get particular joint motion at particular places for something like your mech suit. I think that future… if we could solve some of the pretty simple challenges like scalability, being able to wash the sensors, those sorts of things… that’s really maybe five years down the road.

I hope so. I hope that clothing becomes much more digital than it is right now. I mean, it’s still relatively analog, right? I mean, it’s not too much different from what we were wearing in the middle ages. It’s just different materials and different manufacturing processes, but the actual intent and the actual, I guess, form is pretty much the same, wouldn’t you say?

The materials have changed radically, but the form is the same. I think the function really could be very different if some of these kind of low level challenges of how do you make it durable and how do you make it inexpensive enough that someone wants to buy it can be solved.

Advancements in Clothing

So, I think fashion is one of the most obvious places for this to go. I love talking with my students about various different ways they think about where these sorts of materials, these sorts of functional clothing could go and what they would be used for in the next 5-10 years.

Yeah, especially in the days of surveillance and human beings going into different environments, I feel like clothing is going to be something that’s interesting to watch.

I was reading a science fiction short story, one where because everything is surveilled we all wear head to toe clothing in the interest of keeping our own privacy. It allows people to be very creative. You don’t have to have a human face, even, you know, you could have the face of a tiger or something. And then I was reading like another science fiction story about like, everybody has a set of armor. It becomes almost like a second skin.

There are so many different inspirations for your students, but what’s interesting is I haven’t really seen any of those things come to fruition as of yet. Other than the Apple Watch, you know, other than having a computer on our arm.

It’s like, every science fiction has its own version of clothing, right? And it’s always so advanced and so technologically profound, but of all of the technological advances, I feel like that’s one thing that hasn’t really kind of trickled down into reality yet, you know?

Yeah. If you look at when the first transistor patent was filed, I think in 1912 or some time around then, to when the first transistors were mass manufactured, that’s a pretty big gap.That’s almost 50 years.

Now we’re having this vision of these interfaces between fabrics, between soft materials and motors or other actuators and how do we make that happen. Maybe these ideas first came about in a real concrete way in the 70s and 80s. And so I think we’re starting to get right around the point where I expect that there… and we’re already seeing some breakthroughs where this goes from, “Oh, this would be a really interesting idea, but nobody knows how to make it.” to, “Okay, someone has figured that out and now we can make this at scale and everybody can have one.”

Mhm. What are you seeing that maybe the lay person might not see? Like I know that you were talking about making some clothing to monitor peripheral edema. Is there anybody that’s using this at the cutting edge? Like are high level performance athletes using any sort of wearable technology or soft robotics to increase their performance?

Is there anything that maybe I don’t know about? I always think about Rocky V when Ivan Drago is running and he’s got all these sensors hooked up to him and it’s like the advent of this technology that maybe was not available to the US at that age.

I’m not sure what might be out there that you might have a little bit more insight on than someone like me who doesn’t follow it as closely.

In terms of robotics and wearables, digital wearables specifically, I can’t think of much.

One of the examples that is related to edema is, I have seen more and more athletes use the sort of intermittent pneumatic compression to help move fluid out of their limbs after a heavy workout. I think the evidence on whether or not that actually helps performance is mixed. But it is really interesting to see it go from these huge bulky pumps that you just have to sit there and use for 20 minutes while you’re sitting down and you can’t move to now something that’s much smaller, you can put it on, you can walk around. So that is cool to see. And I think, if it ends up being beneficial to athletes that we will see more active recovery devices like that in the future.

Yeah.

I think that with the advent of artificial intelligence coaches, like some sort of guiding force that is looking out for our health, the ability to sense on a much more microscopic scale… like right now I can really only have like a number of things that are available in this thing right here [shows his smartwatch], but if you were able to have sensors from head to toe I can only imagine like the capabilities that an AI that’s able to compute all that data would be able to guide us towards.

Right now so much of my health is based on evidence that I have to incorporate myself, right? Like I have to have the willpower that says, put that cheesecake down and choose to have a salad instead. But if there ever comes a time where we’re wearing sensors from head to toe, it’s going to be really interesting to see how we incorporate that data into healthier lives for ourselves, wouldn’t you say?

Is that the kind of future that you’re looking towards? What is the kind of future that you see with wearable technology? What is the kind of future that you want to build?

What will the Future Look Like?

I talked about this a little bit earlier with the sort of anxiety around wearables. I would love to build a future where the wearable is providing the user with as much information as is useful to them.

So I think we need to do a lot of work on the user experience side and the health side and figuring out what interventions actually work. You know, is there evidence for these sorts of things?

I don’t know that the like head to toe sensors vision is going to really help me be a more holistically better human.

Mmm.

Despite the fact that this is my day job and I think about it for a lot of time during the week, one of the things that I get worried about with wearables is there’s no thing in an Apple watch that can tell you if you’re becoming more kind or more patient.

[Dr. Awesome chuckles]

There’s nothing in a Fitbit that says like, “Hey, you’re having a hard time right now, but you’re getting through it. Keep it up, because your goal this week is just like get through the week and don’t yell at anyone.”

I want to figure out how we as a society take these technologies and really use them as a tool and don’t let them drive our behavior.

 

I think they have a great potential and great role in informing our behavior, or what we choose to do, what we choose to eat, how we choose to live, but I don’t think they should have the final say.

I hear you, and it could go very Black Mirror, but I’m an optimist and I think that the majority of technology has ended up being a positive experience for human beings. So I would be okay with giving up a certain amount of the decision making capability if it does make me a better person.

Let me just give you a hypothetical scenario. If my own personal AI told me, “Hey, you should call your mom, it’s a Thursday. We know that she’s home right now because we have communications with her AI and she would really appreciate a phone call.” And so I call my mom and that increases that relationship. And then it knows enough to be prescriptive to me to increase the amount of social relationships in my life. And if I don’t have as many of those social relationships, then I start being a bad person, then I start yelling at people and stuff like that. So like the influence of things that make me happy or that should make me happy, make me a better person to other people around me. It has like a calming effect and therefore other people benefit.

I think that that would be something that would be interesting. And even if I am giving up a certain amount of privacy, if I’m giving up a certain amount of free will, to be quite honest with you, I think that that would be something that would be pretty awesome to have.

Right now so much of doing those things… it’s like brushing your teeth, right? Like, you know, it’s good for you. You should be doing it every single day, twice a day if not more. And you know, brushing our teeth is ingrained in us, but calling a friend might not be.

It becomes, “Okay, I could call my friend or I could do this extra work that I need to do.” and then oftentimes we choose that extra work because we look at some sort of other reward. There’s some sort of other incentive to doing it. We don’t really see the value in calling our friend or something like that.

So that’s my opinion about it, but it seems like you’re in the field and you are kind of going in the other direction, would you say?

So I think that that vision of you are at home, your mom is at home and your phone just gives you a little notification and says, “Hey, now would be a good time to call your mom.” That sounds really lovely. And as someone who plays phone tag with my mom about five times a week, that’s something that I would honestly really love.

So I think there really is a balance between the sort of prescriptive, versus gentle offering versus taking away people’s free will. And it’s largely on how it’s framed.

Like if my phone said, “Hey, now would be a good time to call your mom.” I would probably be like, “Oh yeah, that’s a good point. I’m not cooking dinner for another 20 minutes. Yeah. Let me call her.” Whereas if I got a notification from my phone that was like, “You haven’t called your mother in 10 days and she’s so sad right now”, I would be like, “All right, stop guilt tripping me.”

Right.

So I don’t know. Human nature is so interesting, and I think different people are going to respond in different ways, so it’s certainly not going to be a one size fits all. But I do think your vision of how we might be able to use this technology, not just to all become performance athletes or more physically fit, but also to be more socially connected and happier (whatever happier means to us is) is really a nice vision. I like that a lot.

Yeah, I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. If anything, I think that they’re definitely interconnected. You know, I think that if you are a happier athlete, you’re going to outperform somebody who’s a depressed athlete, a hundred percent of the time.

I think right now we’re kind of taking our first little baby steps into human performance from a physiologic standpoint, I think that it’s inevitable that we’re going to get there with the psychological standpoint, too.

I have a three year old daughter and I look at her as just this like plant. I give her a little bit of water and I give her a little bit of sunlight and she’s just growing. But if I could know the exact amount of temperature, the exact amount of sunlight, the exact amount of fertilizer that I’m supposed to have (just like with a real plant) to produce the most bountiful harvest for that plant. I think that human beings are very similar in that we need certain nutrients.

Those nutrients could be very behavioral or physiologic. Like the compression stuff – the evidence is not there, but if it is real like that’s something that gives you some sort of benefit and we’re just now in the baby steps of finding that out. But there are certain behaviors also that do give us benefit, like talking to other people, like giving somebody a hug. All these kinds of things that may not have the evidence right now, but with enough sensors we would be able to get there.

Am I overthinking that? Or do you think that that’s something that’s true?

I don’t think you’re overthinking it. I mean, it really starts to feel like a philosophical question at some point of how well can you capture the human experience with data.

I think you’re going to have some subset of people that says, “Yeah, if you can measure everything or can measure the really important stuff, you’ll get it.” and other people that’ll say, “No, there’s always going to be something you’re not capturing that you’re going to miss. And that’s going to make it feel a little bit off.”

I’m going to take the coward’s way out and sit in between. I think there are a lot of things that we will be able to measure through expansion of sensing to understand the effects of the interplay between physical and mental health and social and psychological health. That really will improve people’s lives if we can use these data then to figure out (both at the individual level as well as the society level) maybe we should take this data and inform better policy and then build more parks or improve public transit or like change the way that we think about what working hours are.

That’s where I’m really excited about the expansion and proliferation of sensing, not just to help people individually but to help us inform policy and to think about how that changes society.

Yeah, I hope that whoever is making those decisions is coming from a place of benefit for humankind. That’s one of the things that I’ve noticed in the commercial aspects of wearable technology, I think that most of the people (like the Whoop strap people), they’re in it for human benefit. And wherever we’re going, I hope that it is something that benefits us all as a society.

Final Questions

Thank you so much for joining us today. We are actually getting close to the end of our time, so I did want to talk about the three questions that I ask all of my guests. And one of them specifically, we kind of touched on, which is this feedback loop of like science fiction inspiring people to go into technology, they create that technology, which therefore inspires science fiction.

What got you into what you’re doing right now? I know that we had also touched that we’re both 80s babies and we had such amazing science fiction available to us. For me, that’s what gave me a lot of motivation to do this podcast as well as to kind of push the boundaries in health care. But what about you, Kris, what are the things that inspired you to do what you’re doing?

I also read a lot of sci fi growing up, a lot of sci fi short stories. And I think that there were a lot of really dystopian stories that I read. I can’t remember a specific one but I think that I was inspired to go, “You know, if we had this technology, which is value neutral, and people are using it for this problem things could get really bleak, but we could also use it in this way and life could be perhaps way better.” So I want to be one of the people that’s nudging it towards something really nice and away from dystopia. So that’s one of the reasons that I was inspired to become an engineer.

I want to be one of the people that’s nudging the future towards something really nice and away from dystopia

Yeah, I feel like it’s 90 percent dystopian science fiction and like 10 percent utopian science fiction. But there’s a lot of good utopian examples, like I always highlight Star Trek because I think that’s like the kind of future that I want to live in. But very interesting to hear the other side of it, which is like you’re trying to build a future to avoid those dystopian futures, which is cool.

Next question. Where do you see soft robotics in 10 years? And that includes wearable technology and other things we have talked about. How do you think it’s going to be incorporated into our daily lives?

So 10 years would be 2034-2035. I don’t think in 10 years that a lot of people are going to have a little soft robot helper, somebody hanging out in their house. Well, mostly for the market and business case… like, I don’t know how many people actually want that.

Gosh, I’m going to be first in line.

[Kris laughs] Okay. Fantastic.

Somebody that can clean your dishes for you. Oh my gosh, that’s going to be a game changer, I think.

Wait! I think where we are going to see a lot of soft robots is not necessarily as like humanoid agents, but as like robots that are designed to do a different task, but are pretty specialized.

So maybe we don’t have…this is going way back now… the Rosie the robot example from The Jetsons that’s like going around doing all the household tasks, but maybe there’s one purpose built robot that is, oh man, just so great at getting the grout in your shower cleaned. And you just like put the robot in your shower once a week, or once a month, and it is really great at identifying spots in the grout and cleaning it and making it perfect. So I think the vision is something pretty specialized.

I do think that wearable and clothing based robots are going to be one of the places that we do see this sooner rather than later.

Then, very much like where we see robots today, I think it’s also going to get a fair amount of in the field use. So perhaps robots that are going out and doing environmental surveillance and checking air quality or soil quality, things like that.

But like things like the Tesla Optimus or Atlas robots, you don’t think that that’s going to be like a household thing? Where you might get home from the groceries and like you put them on the table and then it organizes it in the fridge for you. You don’t think that’s going to happen in 10 years?

I think a lot about sort of smart home robotics. And again, this is inspired by sci fi.

Yeah.

But less so like an agent that is moving around your purpose built house than like the robot is built into a table or is built into your fridge. I think that that vision of robotics will be more acceptable to a lot of people than having a robot walking around your house.

Hmm. I think it’s going to be very soon. Like this new, um, Chinese company (BYD or something like that), they made this like new humanoid robot and it’s got like an outer material coating. But it’s walking around, it’s like doing all this stuff. Even if that thing could just water my plants, right? Which is such a basic thing. Get some water, pours a little bit in there. I would want to have that around.

But we’ll see see who’s right. You live not too far away so we can make like a gentle wager about who’s going to be having their humanoid robot first, but if I get a robot first, I’ll invite you over for dinner or something.

Sounds great.

Last question, Robotics is super in vogue right now, I feel like it’s got just a huge amount of buzz. Wearables, you know, any sort of mechanical engineering that’s geared towards this kind of stuff is so popular. So, outside of all of that technological space, we’re having breakthroughs in so many different fields – genetics, biotechnology, longevity, you name it, human beings are advancing. What is something that is so interesting to you that you just can’t get enough of reading about it?

For me, I can tell you it’s like the longevity space. Actually, no, that’s not true. I would say robotics. Robotics is like the thing that I’m interested in, even though I’m in the healthcare space – I feel like longevity is healthcare adjacent. So I’m passively looking at the Tesla Optimus and the Atlas robotics jumping through hoops and stuff like that. So that’s mine, but what about you? Because you’re kind of in that space. What are you looking at?

I think it would be genetics. Genetics is really interesting to me and that’s the thing that I kind of read about in my spare time. Particularly like genetic risk for particular diseases. CRISPR is simultaneously terrifying and incredible to me.

I think I think it’s definitely more incredible than terrifying. I mean, who would have thought that we would cure sickle cell anemia? It’s something that I learned about medical school as being this genetic like lottery and just, it is what it is, you either have it or you don’t. But like we’ve literally cured it, you know, which is crazy.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Genetics is really, really interesting. So, kudos to you for not only doing the robotic stuff, but learning about the genetic side of things.

Really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining us and I’d love to have you on again. Maybe when I get my own Tesla Optimus you can tell me what you think about it. A very, very interesting conversation, I’d like to thank you and talk about more, but unfortunately we are getting close to the end of our time. So thank you for coming on.

Thank you to all you guys who are joining in on a regular basis. Please like and subscribe, as always. And for those of you guys who are joining us on a weekly basis, please look at us again and we will see you in the future.

Thanks everybody!

 

Important Links

• Kris Dorsey – LinkedIn
• Kris Dorsey – Website
• PARSES Lab at Northeastern
• Fitbit
• Oura Ring
• Whoop
• Skip
• HeroWear
• Baymax
• Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon
• Black Mirror
• The Jetsons

 

About Professor Kris Dorsey

Kris Dorsey is an associate professor in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physical Therapy, Movement, and Rehabilitation Sciences and a core faculty member at the Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University. Previously, Dorsey was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego and an MLK Visiting Associate Professor at the Media Lab at MIT.

Dorsey graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and earned her Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Olin College. Dorsey’s current research interests include reconfigurable, novel morphology, and active soft sensors and the design of soft sensors for soft robot actuators and wearable medical and rehabilitation devices.