The race for automation now appears unstoppable. We are surrounded, sometimes besieged, by countless devices that are getting smarter every day. Furthermore, robots are becoming almost familiar figures in our daily lives. One of the tasks for which the latter are increasingly used is that ofreception/assistance of customers/users. Currently you can find them almost everywhere: from airports, to hospitals (even in Italy), to supermarkets.
Such devices, we are told, can help us, assist us, in a word, simplify our life, even improve it. In addition to being intelligent, these devices are also blatantly social. The new frontier, in fact, is that of interaction or, as it is presented to us, of collaboration between man and machine. Automatons, however, are increasingly similar to us and the interaction with them, even more than with devices in general, is increasingly profound, more varied, more intimate. The goal is to conquer us. Either to push us to make purchases, or to obtain (or worse, steal) data, often as many as possible and of the most disparate nature.
Artificial intelligence is perceived as the holy grail of modernity. Research and implementation proceed quickly. Automation grows and investments in research and development of hardware and software grow even more.
The retail sector
One of the sectors that has invested large sums and recklessly bet on robotic technology and AI in general is the Retail sector. A study conducted by Jupiner Research estimates that in 2019 total AI spending in the Retail sector will amount to $3,6 billion. It is expected that in 2023 this will reach 12 billion, an increase of 230%. The main motivation lies in a desperate attempt to lower costs. The aim is to support the ruthless (and according to some unfair) competition from the great giants of the web (Amazon in the lead) and e-commerce in general.
The bulk of the investment is therefore aimed at optimizing various activities, starting with those relating to warehouses. Nonetheless, an ever-increasing share is being allocated to in-store service-oriented robotic technologies. Last but not least, those aimed at improving the customer experience, both within the stores and in the online dimension.
Kroger, for example, a brick and mortar food retailer, has entered into a partnership with the British Ocado Group, another player in the sector, but this time online. The goal is to build up to twenty automated food warehouses in the United States. Kroger itself is experimenting in Houston with a delivery system to customers using self-driving cars. Another retail giant, Wallmart, is employing robots "... to monitor inventory, clean floors and unload trucks" (as well as replace some workers).
Giant Food Stores, a supermarket chain that operates in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, has adopted Marty, a tall gray robot. Marty is present in 172 Giant Food Stores, as well as 100 Stop&Shop group stores in New England. According to reports from the Washington Post, the automaton scours the aisles of supermarkets in search of potential dangers and, if reports them to both customers and staff. Marty, meanwhile, checks the shelves to identify any out-of-stock items. He also verifies that there are no discrepancies between the prices in the shop and those in the company database.
The use of automatons of various shapes has the aim of enriching and enhancing the customer experience. Translated: involve us, fascinate us, captivate us. However, scientists still don't have the perfect recipe. Interaction with machines has made considerable progress, but there is still much to do and much remains to be learned. In fact, automatons are not always capable of establishing effective communication. Sometimes, it turns out, not even appropriate or desirable. Sometimes these devices reveal their limits dramatically, as in the case of Fabio, a small robot hired by a company in the retail sector in Scotland.
Fabio
Fabio boasts a sad record: he was the first robot in history to be fired. If we want to be picky, the automaton was removed a week before the expiry of his assignment. Therefore, as Lorenzo Fantoni points out, «… if we want to be honest, Fabio was also the first robot with a fixed-term job». In reality it was an experiment that involved Heriot-Watt University, the BBC (for the BBC's Six Robots & US series) and the (very Italian) supermarket chain Margiotta Food & Wine. The aim of the experiment was to ascertain the possibilities of integration between the robot and the customers in the flesh. Although it cannot be called a success, the test has provided interesting insights into the interaction between androids and humans.
The name Fabio had been given affectionately by employees of the Edinburgh supermarket where he worked. Fabio is a shopbot produced by the Japanese Softbank, an automaton of the Pepper line. As the manufacturer's website states: «Pepper is the world's first humanoid social robot capable of recognizing faces and basic human emotions. Pepper has been optimized for human interaction and is able to interact with people through dialogue and its own touch screen».
Il I refuseto
Fabio's initial impact on the supermarket's customers was positive. The robot would greet them with a high five and warmly welcome them with a "Hello gorgeous." However, the idyll did not last long. The android's answers were often vague and sometimes ended up increasing the confusion of the patrons. To anyone who asked where a certain beer was, the automaton's reply consisted of a banal: «It's in the alcohol section», just as the cheeses or milk were «In the fridge».
Fabio ended up irritating the customers, who started ignoring him. “We thought a robot was a great addition to show customers that we want to do new and fun things.” Reports Elena Margiotta who manages the supermarket chain of the same name with her father Franco and her sister Luisa. "Unfortunately, Fabio didn't work as we hoped," Luisa clarified
The cause may be poor scheduling, or the inadequacy of the robot to move and accompany the buyers between departments, or the difficulties encountered in understanding the questions asked due to background noise in the supermarket. Whatever the cause, Fabio flopped.
Nonetheless, the robot was offered a second chance, albeit in some ways demoting it. Fabio was relegated to a room at the back of the shop to offer buyers free samples of roast pork. Here, indeed, the automaton did even worse.
Customers have not only ignored or dodged him, but in some cases have even left the store. At the same time, the performance of his human colleagues was quite different, against whom Fabio clearly lost the match: 12-2. In a quarter of an hour, in fact, the former attracted no less than twelve patrons, while the android stopped at two. "Performance was not what was expected, people avoided it and scared customers", commented the supermarket owners.
Fired on the spot!
At this point Fabio was running out of time and to Franco Margiotta who announced his dismissal he replied calmly: «Are you angry?». Nonetheless Oliver Lemon, director of the interaction laboratory at Heriot-Watt University, the father of the droid, was keen to make a clarification. The sacking was a gimmick in the newspapers: «It's an invention. Fabio stayed for a week, which is simply the time agreed with the BBC to film».
According to Lemon Fabio it wasn't a total failure: “Actually, [the staff] felt it was an improvement since they were able to handle frequent and boring requests. Like those of customers who kept asking where the items were, which I think they found very useful». Not exactly of the same opinion Luisa Margiotta: «We believe that our customers love personal interaction and talking to our staff is an important part of all this».
And it is precisely the interaction that made the difference. That's where Fabio failed: "Our staff members know our regular customers very well and can converse with them on a daily basis, and I doubt that robots would be able to accommodate that," Margiotta continued skeptically. She concluded, "It's possible, I think, that robots could help in roles such as warehouse duties, but I doubt they will ever eliminate the need for human interaction."
Perhaps Fabio arrived too early and paid the price of being ahead of the times. Nonetheless, Margiotta may soon have to change her mind. According to what digital progress portends, in the (very) near future the AI of robots and various devices will know us much better than a close friend and even ourselves can hope. And artificial intelligence will be able to use this precious wealth of knowledge in the most satisfactory way. It remains to be seen for the benefit of who or what…
Empathy
Fabio's story, however, as well as the surprises, was not yet definitively concluded. When the exonerated robot was packed up and returned to Heriot-Watt University, his real-life colleagues welcomed the news with disappointment.
It was thus discovered that while Fabio had failed to capture the sympathy of the customers, actually causing annoyance and disinterest, instead, he had aroused affection and a certain attachment in his human colleagues. “One of the things we didn't expect was that people who work in the shop would attach themselves to him. When we took it and put it back in the box, someone started crying,” notes Lemon. This is all the more surprising since an entirely different reaction was expected. It was assumed, continues Lemon, that the supermarket employees "would feel threatened because they would perceive him as competing with them".
Instead it was his (impromptu) colleagues who regretted the small robot (1,20 m) from Softbank. Perhaps because they won the competition even though, almost from the start, it practically didn't exist. Perhaps, indeed, the reasons are deeper and must be sought within us, in our minds, in the evolution that has shaped our brains.
The discrepancy between the reaction generated by Fabio in his clients and the one induced in his colleagues, of a totally opposite sign, is revealing of the functioning of our psyche and of our most intimate emotions. It probably pertains to the still partly mysterious sphere of empathy, of identification with the other, of the relationship between the self and the outside world.
Design and human contact
Fabio is not the only automaton to have encountered problems interacting with customers and involving them. Ubn other is Tom, one of his fellow worker employee in Germany at a chain of electronics stores. It too has suffered the same fate, that of being shunned by customers. Tom, however, was not fired, but reprogrammed to dance Gangnam Style, in an attempt, to say the least, extreme to capture customers.
According to Rebecca Dare, a lecturer at Monash University, the failures of automatons to engage customers have a cause. The "misalignment" between the design of the robot and the function it is called upon to perform.
That is: «A key element of the design is the face of the robot. Looking at the robots available in shops today, such as 'Tom', 'Pepper' and 'Paul', most were designed with round and friendly, if submissive, faces.
Although these features communicate kindness and reliability, according to Dare more elongated and dominant faces would truly express competence and intelligence. These are attributes much more suited to the task to which robots are used. The Australian teacher then added a further element. “In addition to the shape of the face, robots in stores should connect shoppers with human assistance when required, rather than remove human contact from the shopping experience.”
Il human contact it is another important element, conceivably, in the chemistry of interaction with machines. Several surveys have shown that the vast majority of users in their "shopping experience" prefer to relate to people rather than droids. Often these are not rejected outright. A research conducted by Oracle Net Suite, highlighted that as many as 95% of customers said they are not interested in interacting with robots or chatbots while shopping, both in bricks and mortar stores and in virtual online ones.
The factor culturele
Nonetheless, there is no shortage of positive cases of successful and positive interaction with automatons. An example, still in the Retail sector, is LoweBot, a robot from the Lowe's chain of stores. The bot helps customers find the goods in the store and also performs other functions as well.
Another element that has its weight is the cultural one. Research conducted in 2016 by the University of Wisconsin showed that students had particularly high expectations of the work of machines and were, consequently, extremely demanding of them. “Researchers found that if [experiment] participants received bad directions [from a machine], they quickly abandoned the computer advisor. They didn't even use his suggestions for subsequent trials."
On the other hand, if the same thing happened to a human being, the students were much more understanding and forgiving. "It's as if people were 'forgiving' the human advisor for making a mistake, but not extending the same sense of leniency to the computer." This, concluded Andrew Prahl, one of the authors of the research, ultimately has profound implications for the automation process we witness on a daily basis:
“This has very important implications because we are constantly seeing humans being replaced by computers in the workplace… This research suggests that any potential efficiency gains that go in the direction of automation could have a backlash. All automation has to do is fail once, and people will quickly lose trust and stop using it. This is one of the few studies out there that really show the potential downsides of automation in the workplace."
The specificity of the southeast Asian
In some countries, those of Southeast Asia in particular, the attitude towards robots and devices Intelligent it is usually quite different. Japan has invested heavily in robotics and AI technologies in general. In the land of the rising sun, automatons are used with excellent results (primarily in relation to acceptance by people) in various fields. These range from elderly care, to medical research, to assisting passengers at Tokyo Station. Tokyo has also officially granted residency to Shibuya Mirai, a chatbot programmed to simulate a seven-year-old boy. In Saudi Arabia they went even further, granting citizenship to Sophia, an android produced by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics.
In conclusion, the elements that come into play when it comes to man-machine interaction are many. To date, the magic formula has not yet been found that ensures a positive outcome and even before that, acceptance by human beings. Nonetheless, when it comes to AI, progress is rapid. Perhaps, when you read this article, you will already have a robot next to you to keep you company or, who knows, maybe a digitized voice will read it for you…
