Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dirk the homeless robot”.
I’M fred hubbells from amsterdam, and i brought my homeless robot to maker faire. Well, it’s uh. How would you say it in american? It’S a hobo robot looks like a homeless, he’s a homeless, in fact, and he uh roams the street begging for a bit of money. But he does, he does something in return. He returns a bit of music from his little organ.
The reactions of the people are quite different, especially on the streets when you show him in another context, not on the maker faire, but just on the street. People are totally confused because almost everybody always sees a real person, and so everybody thinks it’s real and then slowly they find out in a quite long process that it might be a robot and it’s very confusing for people they really get totally confused and mostly amused. Sometimes a bit angry or they don’t know how to behave and uh. It’S a big shock to find out you’re, not looking at a person you’re not talking to a person but you’re talking to a machine. Well, basically, i’m a i’m a puppeteer from origin. My girlfriend told me that she taught me that so i try to make the robot move and behave like a human as much as i can.
I did a lot of training and of course i don’t want people to see me to find me and at first i was hiding like 20 meters further on somewhere behind the tree, but then people would find me quite quickly and then later on, i learned to Be very close to the robot uh and just talk to the people and uh. Then i kind of disappear in the crowd. Yes, i wanted the robot to do something, not just walk on the street, and the first thing i did was uh made this mechanical arm to back for money, and it was it was. It was good, it was nice, but he was begging for this money and it didn’t feel right. I felt sorry for the robot and sorry for the audience, because he didn’t do anything in return and then that was a kind of a crisis i felt i felt.
I felt bad for a while because i was stuck with the project and then and then uh. A very old friend of mine is in the 80s he passed away. Now i discussed it with him and i said i wish i had some kind of instrument and then the old guy said i have. I have an old organ for you and it was a gift of heaven and uh. So i gave the robot this organ and and then then it was ready. I never touched it. I never changed anything on the robot anymore because it was uh. It was perfect, it was in balance and he got some money. He gave the music in return and i got to buy some food for me and drinks and it was ready if anybody would like to learn a bit more about dirk the homeless, robot and other projects you can go to. My company is called electric circus and it’s electric circuits dot, nl from netherlands, electric circus, dot, nl .