Transcriber: gaith Takrity Reviewer: Michael Nystrom
Ever since the invention of the potter’s wheel
back in ancient Mesopotamia,
we humans have had machines in our lives.
The way we interact with these machines has varied over time, but mostly
we’ve used our bodies and our hands.
Technology helps us humans in our everyday lives,
and it even propels us to the Moon.
We have just entered the second era of human deep space exploration,
and I believe that we are on the brink of the next paradigm shift
in human-machine interaction.
And it might be used on the Moon first.
I’ll tell you why in a minute.
But first, what is interaction?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines interaction as:
“when two or more people or things communicate with or react to each other.”
We have human-object interaction, like when I sip on my glass of water.
Like when you have your first cup of coffee in the morning
or when you inadvertently push on a door that you were supposed to pull.
Then we have human-machine interaction.
And that occurs when we as humans want to interact with
or control any kind of machine.
And that's what I'm going to focus on here today.
Like when you want to pull a lever to control a crane,
if the interaction is designed well and you know what to do,
it usually goes right.
But this requires some sort of afterthought, training, or practice.
A hundred years ago,
machines were mostly mechanical in their nature,
and they were built in such a way that they require
a very specific set of input actions in order to work as intended.
It’s a simple action-reaction interaction.
Then, with the advent of the microprocessor in the early 1970s,
we were able to create programmable interfaces.
Suddenly, we could choose what button to push or lever to pull
and decide what would happen.
But with great power comes great responsibility.
And since then,
we have had to consciously think about how we create these interactions
in order to make them intuitive for us humans.
In the 1980s, the graphical user interface was introduced,
and the mouse and keyboard became the standard
on how to interact with machines.
It would take nearly 40 years until this interaction was dethroned
by the touchscreen as the most widely adopted one.
At this point in time, suddenly, anyone would be able to control a machine,
and you didn’t need to be a programmer to do it.
During this time, technology has been rapidly advancing.
We have, suddenly, computers in our pockets
with so much excess computational power
that it can do more than its core tasks
At any given point in time,
you have idle processing power,
and it’s a shame that we don’t do more with it
because we could use this processing power to enhance the interaction.
In fact, we have more processing power in our pockets
than was used for the Apollo missions.
So we’ve come a long way, but there’s a long way to go still.
Even though we have advanced from analog inputs like buttons and levers
into more digital spheres like the touch screens.
The paradigm is yet to come.
We’re now able to equip new machines with sensors,
microphones, and other means of sensing the environment.
And suddenly, we could use that as input methods
so our bodies could become the control system.
There is a digital divide
where some people proficient in technology know how to use
all of the gadgets that we now carry around,
where some might also be left behind.
But we can choose to design a different future,
a future that is human-centric,
where interaction with machines is easy,
effortless, and letting people in control.
We can create a future where humans experience happiness
with positive interactions with their environment.
But then we need to make human-machine interaction intuitive,
and that is what we have been doing at my company for the past six years.
We believe that there is a need for a universal translator
that can take into account the environment and the context
in which an action is performed,
and then analyze the human behavior,
try to extract the intention behind that action,
and translate that into machine command.
If we manage to do this properly,
we could revolutionize the way humans and machines interact.
It will become more visible
once technology for extended and augmented realities
become more mature and usable.
We see headsets, glasses, and other means of adding a digital layer
on top of our world or merge them all together.
My journey into this realm started with a smart glove.
It’s a sensor-based glove that could control drones.
Then it was discovered by Dr. Pascal Lee,
a planetary scientist and researcher at NASA.
Now, our friend who encouraged us to develop this technology
for the potential use of exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
It quickly became
the “Astronaut Smart Glove.”
And we used it during a field test with a NASA Haughton-Mars project
where it was integrated
into an analog prototype of a next-generation spacesuit
replacing the astronauts’ need for its conventional controller.
We created an interaction system that intuitively let astronauts
interact with and control robotic assets in space.
And this could be used on Earth as well.
So why would this benefit us?
Because intuitive interaction with machines
would help create a more inclusive world,
a world where humans are engaged with
and empowered by the use of technology
rather than being estranged in a world
where it goes literally out of our control.
I envision a future, a future for all of us,
where we, as humans, can impact the way we interact with machines
and the choices we make today.
When designing systems for interacting with technology,
we need to think about the humans in the loop.
We need to make it human-centric.
We believe that human-machine interaction
should be universal and on human terms.
Thank you.
(Applause)