| Salt Lake City
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| University of Utah
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| Introduction |
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Prof. Norman: |
In graduate years - I was really interested in neuro-prosthetics, at the time. I was slightly interested in the cyborg sort of revolution - and er what was going to happen, as I was interested in robotics as a kid, and the whole concept of trying to rehabilitate people - what would be the degree of rehabilitation that was possible - seemed like the wrong way to go to me. I mean the idea of implanting systems in people to make them more mobile (paraplegics, tetraplegics) - it seemed like it was not going to be necessarily the best way to go. A more fruitful way to go - this could be something that could be down your line - would be not to instrument the body, so the body can move through space, but to instrument the 'id' that move its way through the world and interact with the outside world, and the tetraplegic could remain in bed, and interact through this sort of extension of himself.. |
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David: |
A kind of telepresence |
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Prof. Norman: |
Something like that. And when I talked about that to a variety of friends and colleagues and everything over the years, people are generally horrified at the idea. And if they're horrified it's because they don't believe that people can - their identity can be this remote system which is sort of driving around, and they think that the body is an important part of interaction and whatever. And I'm not sure that's the case. I think that people are very good at sort of virtual bodies - when you talk to this thing [holds phone up in the air] and you have the sense that you're talking to a person, you watch television and have a sense that you're looking at a person, and so on and so forth.
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So I think that, while this is an unpopular idea, I think it's only - it was a knee-jerk unpopularity and it was not a rational unpopularity, or a well-founded unpopularity. So - and I haven't done anything more with that, I just thought that that might be a better way to go. It would be easier to make little, small robots to interact with the world than…. Now getting tetraplegics more mobile also has a positive side effect as well too - there's of course psychologically positive side-effect that they're a more capable functioning human being which would be very psychologically satisfying to these individuals. Like, there are problems with bedsores and things like that, and this is a real serious problem - and degeneration of bone mass and degeneration of muscle-mass and everything kind of falls apart when you don't move. So getting these people to move would be a more positive thing, but back 25 years ago, people fantasised about exoskeletal systems that could be put around a tetraplegic sort of to make them be able to walk and move in the world - and this was just so incredibly cumbersome and energy inefficient. You have - I mean - it just didn't seem like a good idea. Now - over the last 25 years I think we've made a little more progress. And so - well we're still a long ways from making tetraplegics walk and interact with the world. It's possibly becoming more possible than it was 25 years ago. It amazes me the things we've been able to do. But still a long ways away. Who have you interacted with so far in your quest for knowledge in this area. |
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David: |
Well, interestingly enough, last week, I attended a conference in Washington DC on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation. |
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Prof. Norman:(laughter) |
Who was the sponsoring organisation? |
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David: |
DARPA. |
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Prof. Norman: |
DARPA |
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David: |
Yeah. So it's Govt money. And it's a military project. |
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Prof. Norman: |
Right. |
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David: |
Which kind of fascinated me. |
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Prof. Norman: |
The concept there was to use these in battlefield situations? |
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David: |
Absolutely. The morning sessions were various representatives of the marine corps, naval, sof, and there was one buyer - Dr. Garcia of DARPA, and erm, so for me the morning sessions were very interesting, including the address from Dr. Garcia - it was a very intriguing few days, and it kind of realigned some of my ideas - I had questions typed for you and I've re-written them completely. |
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Prof. Norman: |
So you have probably some very good ideas - you've a better idea - about the state of this technology than I do, coz I've not followed it. The exoskeletal technology. |
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David: |
It's very interesting - California Institute of Technology are using your array in some of their work and they were presenting that work in Washington |
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Prof. Norman: |
Richard Anderson? |
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David: |
I'm not sure of the name - I could check up |
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Prof. Norman: |
It's probably Richard Anderson |
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David: |
Perhaps I should launch into [holding up question sheets]
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Prof. Norman: |
Yeah sure - you have very specific issues? |
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David: |
Yeah, they're quite broad questions really, but they sort of cover two or three chapters of my PhD - and obviously some of them are quite pithy subjects so …. One of the things I'm looking at - trying to get a handle on, certain attitudes to, triangulate in a way, I'm comparing, juxtaposing er, Holistic approaches to the body.
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