Joel Hodgson Quotes

Hollywood likes to imagine robots as mechanical copies of ourselves - which is a terrible idea.

And I think it's likely that there will be Data's out there one day. I hope so, if there are, that they all look exactly like me!

Have you seen these Japanese hospital droids, or humanoids, or whatever they call it? They've perfected the skin, and the skin looks so real. They have these motors between the eyes for when they smile. It's just mind-blowing.

Most robotic heads have 20 motors. Mine have 32.

If I could do anything, I'd be an engineer of some sort. I used to build robots.

If you make your robot look exactly like Albert Einstein, then the robot better be as smart as Einstein, or its user is going to feel cheated.

Building a robot that has legs and walks around is a very expensive proposition. Mother Nature has created many wonderful things, but one thing we do have that nature doesn't is the wheel, a continuous rotating joint, and tracks, so we need to make use of inventions to make things simpler.

We're going to have robots in the home, but they're not going to be walking. Legs are complicated, unreliable and costly. Robots are going to look and be designed to meet the function they're supposed to perform. People will still name them and connect with them.

I've always been interested in gadgets and technology and I've always been a reader.

When we built Roomba, we explicitly designed it to not have a face. We didn't want to think it was cute; we wanted people to take it seriously, so we gave it more of an industrial look. People personified their Roomba anyway. Over 80 percent of people name their robot. We did nothing to encourage people to do that, but they do it anyway.

I believe that robots should only have faces if they truly need them.

Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2.

The ideal vacuum cleaner would be one you never see. It needs to not just be a cool gadget, but a product that cleans your floor correctly. I can imagine people having a cupboard full of robots that only come out when you need them to fulfil a specific purpose.

I also know that in the second movie, the sequel, Eric made some huge advances with the robot suit. That just made it even better. You put the suit on and moved your arms then the robot's arms would move in sync with yours.

It's hard not to love Roomba. Roomba had such an amazing impact on the field. When we launched, we asked people, 'Is it a robot?' and got an overwhelming no - 'robots' have arms and legs; they command data. There was a very strong perception that robots had to look like people.

With regard to robots, in the early days of robots people said, 'Oh, let's build a robot' and what's the first thought? You make a robot look like a human and do human things. That's so 1950s. We are so past that.

Through our evolution, we're so specialized for social interaction. So, if you can really design robots that can interact with people, in this very natural, interpersonal way, I think that would be great. You wouldn't have to have people read manuals, in order to operate them.

Technology has to be invented or adopted.

You want to know what a robot's designed for. And if it's doing something outside the scope of what it's made to do, you should be very suspicious.

As a child I was very into gadgets and machines and robots. The idea of experimenting with machines to create art was always something I tinkered with.

Robots are very tricky to design and expensive, whereas humans are cheaply manufactured. Humans can handle things with greater manual dexterity than most robots I've known.

The last thing I want my robot to be is sarcastic. I want them to be pragmatic and reliable - just like my dishwasher.

For me, I don't think there's anything more human than technology. That's a big thing separating us from other animals: we make things, we build things, we create machines.

The 'snakebot', which is a type of mechanized, biologically inspired robot, itself has roots in Japanese laboratories of the 1970s. What the team at Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon is doing today under professor Howie Choset is making the 'snakebots' stronger, smaller, and more maneuverable than ever.

Why would you not have a robot that looks like Abraham Lincoln? Why would it look like an erector set? Why use a computer with a punchcard, when you could use one with a touch pen on the screen? Why a car, when you could use a jetpack?