PROJECT TITLE: A Robot Psychiatrist
PROJECT STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: I was inspired by THIS meme that was at one time commonly seen and shared in my moments. It showed us a way how modern people can “relieve” their stress and I wanted to make some sarcastic comments on that. Then it suddenly came to me how similar this useless process was to the counseling experiences that were either from myself or from what I heard from my friends. From my previous research and understanding, I’ve always interpreted “interaction” as a kind of “back-and-forth” dialogue. And this time, in my project, I’m actually going to include that exact “back-and-forth” dialogue! Between my choice of whether to do it as “a line from the robot psychiatrist and a line from the patient” or showing what one party says on a whole page and then starting what the other says on a whole other page, after discussing it with my friend, I decided that staying it as one line after another was better because that was what my friend had in mind when imagining it, and it is also physically creating an actual “dialogue”. This “A robot psychiatrist” project is trying to satire the seemingly effective but deep down useless and sometimes even harmful conversation between a patient and a psychiatrist. I’ve noticed that so many friends around me, including myself, have come up to a counselor or psychiatrist with great hope, but left extremely disappointed and even more depressed. And I really hope that people should be clear about whether psychiatrists actually help them or not and that more work can be done to improve this whole system, or else it can be simply replaced by some dumb robots.
PROJECT PROPOSAL PLAN: My project aims to show the uselessness and ineffectiveness of the whole counseling conversation. And Professor Minsky gave me great insights on how to make the aim clearer by showing the sense of absurdity through the working of the physical outlook. And this is how the whole process is going to work: The patient comes and says “Hi” and the microphone detects it, and the Bit voicer server translates it into text and sends it to Arduino so that Arduino knows it can start the process by saying “Are things going well these days?” Then, whatever the patient says, the computer screen will show a line below “Are things going well these days?”, which is saying “I’m not sure. I feel like I’m pressured but I’m okay.” After that, the following line will be “Okay, let’s deal with that, but first let me know: Which one of them do you think best describes the problem that has recently been disturbing you? Touch it to continue.” And then the box will be popping out four drawers with different fruits, namely apples, bananas, oranges, and lemons inside, which are preprogrammed to be linked to a specific type of common problems namely sleeping problems, health problems, difficulties in dealing with relationships, and concerns about grades and studies so that the follow-up questions can be more “related” to patients’ actual concerns. Then comes the real conversation part, where the patients say something, and the Bit voicer receives it and translates it to text showing on the dialogue screen (it is best if the characters can pop up one after another) with a rotating circle showing that it’s working, kind of like the feedback that Siri gives us. And when the patient stops speaking for 2 seconds or if a programmed 20-second time limit is up, the circle stops rotating and starts to speak, saying words that are already programmed into it, which is a series of sentences depending on the choice of fruits he/she made. And finally, the psychiatrist will say something like “You do show a sign of slight depression, and words imply that you may have been suffering from Hippocampus impairment, but you’ll be fine. Don’t worry, and I’m always here for you” to show his ability to use technical terms to freak you out. And during this whole process, the drawer with a tissue box inside will pop out randomly, either when it’s asking a question or in the middle of your answering the question in order to emphasize the “standard procedure” of almost every counseling process.
I’ll first find out what I can do to make the connection between the touch sensor and the fruit a promising connection and also to buy a bitviocer server before the end of this week (Nov 27), and then test out if the “fruit sensor” can work when they are relatively close to each other and how to make them not affecting each other before Nov 29. At the same time, I’m planning to make two drawers on Monday (Nov 28) so that I can test if the “fruit switches” can work in the drawers. And throughout the whole timeline, I’ll be starting to explore how the bitviocer server works and start writing some codes for the whole conversion process and that should be done by Dec 2, Friday. And I’m going to put all the parts together and only leave the Bitvoicer part to be filled. From Nov 30 to Dec 4, I’m also going to build the stepper motor part of the drawer to make them pop out and laser-cut the rotation links. From Dec 5 to Dec 6, I’m going to figure out how the bitvoicer server works and integrate it into my code. And on Dec 7 and Dec 8, I can make some slight changes and test it multiple times to make sure everything is going fine. And here’s my calendar: (changing “draw” into “measuring”, and if I cannot have access to Bitvoicer server, then I’ll be working on a microphone to detect whether they’re speaking or not, and the lines “recognized” from the the “patient” is going to be some random letters that seems to make sense but does not make sense at all.)
CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE: My preparatory research are “A Simple Interactive Project with Processing on SBC” by Haoming Weng, which basically repeats the strokes that users draw and then the strokes flow around in a linear pathway back and forth, “swimming” like some little fish. And the second one is called “Interactive Gloves” by emcnany, which can detect users’ changes in gestures or if two fingertips are sticking together to realize the following goals: to change the position and the size of a cube or to change the direction of the user in a game. And the two projects above both show a strong and obvious sense of “interaction” by making immediate feedback so that the users can know what result their actions have and thus experience the process of strengthening the “interaction”. And that is what I want to keep and also break a little. I wanted to keep the part of giving immediate feedback and therefore I will try to design more signals so that the users can better know when to react. And I also want my box to pop out unexpected things that can go beyond their expectations in order to create a sense of sarcastic humor. So I’m definitely trying to get close to my ideal version of “interaction” but I’m also trying to add a bit of “exotic spice” into that definition.
My project is aimed at those who had been to a useless or even make-you-question-yourself psychiatrist which sometimes can create traumatic memory. And my project is therefore here to tell them that it’s not your fault but the psychiatrist’s fault. Moreover, I’m here to satire their arrogance, their ignorance of the correct way to go through a counseling conversation, and the indifference they show: they don’t care what you are actually saying and they just throw you a “Don’t worry” at the end when what you really want is the actual help or emotional support. And when I thought about that meme, I immediately linked it to my own real-life, terrible counseling experience, and I have no idea what these psychiatrists are thinking and I wonder where the sincere and warm part that they can actually provide went. I hope that more work can be done to improve this whole system. Probably more meaningful projects can be built to criticize this system and there is also a possibility in the future that AI psychiatrists can actually replace human psychiatrists based on big data and deep learning. Although a bit pathetic, when we think about the idea that it is AI who knows how to give us more emotional support rather than humans, that can be true and of actual benefit to us.