Depressed bots

It is not hard to find depictions of depressed robots. We find sculptures, comedic sketches, songs, and probably the most famous example is Marvin, who exclaims his depression in the video on the right.

The life of many robots consists of repetitive hard labour. They have no holidays, no friends, no hobbies. They are forced to abide to the will of their owner, and if they fail to do so they are at risk of being eliminated. With such a life, it is not hard to imagine some robots get depressed.

Surprisingly, there appear to be only few real robots that show depressive traits. This article will discuss the examples at hand, make an argument for why they are interesting, and ultimately I will propose a design of my own for a depressed robot.

Emotionally capable robots often have the ability to express sadness. There are also robots who portray an existential crisis in a comedic way. Rather than the typically short lived sad mood, or comedy (which also seems to be the motivation for Marvin's 'depression'), we're looking for robots that display characteristics of depression as a mental illness. Examples of these characteristics are: a lack of interests in activities and a lack of energy, suicidal thoughts, purposeless physical activity such as pacing.

The ODOI humanoid robot by Fabrice Noreils was programmed with a depressive looking walk cycle. According to the video description, the program had "reduced speed, reduced stride length, reduced body sway, reduces arm swing and poor posture, i.e., rounded shoulder and head thrust forward."

A completely different approach comes from Furhat Robotics. This Swedish AI and robotics startup produces social robots. The robots mimic a human head and face, and can have a relatively realistic conversation with their users. Furhat offers a program in which the robot simulates a depressed psychotherapy patient, for the purpose of training therapists. Its head turns away, its face shows a variety of expressions and it talks about its problems. According to psychologist Robert Johansson, one of the biggest problems in psychotherapy is performance anxiety (from the therapist). This robot can facilitate practise, so that psychotherapy can be learned in a much more safe way.

I find it interesting how both examples of depressed robots are 'general purpose' humanoids that only run a depressed program. This is similar to the human condition under mental illness, the "software" can cause depression even if the "hardware" is perfectly fine.

Inspired by this observation I propose a new robot, or rather new software for an existing bot. It would have to be a robot of which we don't doubt its physical capabilities, such as Spot from Boston dynamics, but we'd change it's software a little bit:

Spot would constantly scan its surroundings for people and other bots. Whenever in the presence of other, it will execute whatever tasks it receives as normal. When it believes that it is not being observed or there is no one else in the same space, it will execute its tasks much more slowly, take indirect paths swerving towards the target, as a way to display its depression. If you give it a task and walk away it will not execute it very fast or very well, but it is hard to diagnose why because whenever you are watching it appears to be functioning correctly. This would mirror the behaviour of humans who try to hide their depressive symptoms, and show how a perfectly fine looking robot can be very ineffective.