You only get one chance to make a first impression, and that's true if you're a robot as well as if you're a person.
The first time that I met one of these robots was at a place called Willow Garage in 2008.
When I went to visit there, my host walked me into the building and we met this little guy.
He was rolling into the hallway, came up to me, sat there,
stared blankly past me, did nothing for a while,
rapidly spun his head around 180 degrees and then ran away.
And that was not a great first impression. The thing that I learned about robots that day
is that they kind of do their own thing, and they're not totally aware of us.
And I think as we're experimenting with these possible robot futures, we actually end up learning a lot more about ourselves
as opposed to just these machines. And what I learned that day
