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Girls don't like technology, and they don't want to study technical sciences. Would that change if technologies became more human-like? A Dutch researcher believes so, and is investigating with the help of an interactive robot cat.
Saskia is an iCat; an interactive robotic head with cartoon cat-like features. Ask her about herself and she says, "I have a camera in my nose with which I can see, a microphone with which to hear, and a speaker with which to talk. I can also feel, because in my ears and feet there are touch sensors".
As she talks, Saskia's head, eyebrows, ears and lips move, with lamps in her ears and feet lending emphasis to the visual display of her emotions, which are also apparent in her melodious voice.
One day there will be technologies that can behave like this autonomously - unlike Saskia, whose responses are all controlled by a human using a laptop. And interaction specialist Dr Jacobijn Sandberg from the University of Amsterdam, thinks this could be a valuable lure to entice girls into following careers in the technical sciences. "In Holland the percentage of girls participating in technical science education is really extremely low", she said recently during an event called Vliegende Hollanders.
Netherlands' reputation|
The Netherlands expects a shortage of around 77,000 technically trained workers by the year 2010 and has one of the lowest rates of females going into technical education of any country in Europe. During the event the Dutch government presented a cheque for 60 million euros to be used to improve education and teaching in relevant fields. |
'Vliegende Hollanders' was a one day Science and Technology Summit held in Amsterdam, with the aim to boost interest in and discussion about science and technology education and careers within the Netherlands. It was organised by 'Platform Bèta Techniek' as part of a whole programme dedicated to this goal.For her part, Dr Sandberg has been studying the way that people interact with iCats, comparing socially and emotionally active ones, such as Saskia, against a social version and a neutral one "which is very flat voiced and doesn't show any expressions".
Under controlled conditions she and her colleagues found that "the one that expresses social behaviour as well as emotions is most well liked by everyone, but especially by female persons," although Dr Sandberg emphasises that this was a tentative finding and the team needs to "follow up with more research".
Socially engaging technology
The human interaction expert asserts that the potential of some technologies to be socially engaging is the key to promoting interest in the technologies themselves among females.
"I think many people don't realise that women do use a lot of technology, but it plays a different role in their lives; it's to support all their social endeavours much more than it is to the men. To my belief, technology is moving out of a box into our social contexts, and the technology itself therefore needs to be adapted. And in a natural kind of way girls will like that."
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Dr Jacobijn Sandberg |
But even if females do respond better to social technologies, does this necessarily mean that they would want to make the leap into studying and working in the technical sciences?
Dr Sandberg believes so, and thinks suitable role models would also help. She cites MIT robotic engineer Dr Cynthia Breazeal, who's developing a similarly interactive robot, called 'Kismet', "and she's very involved both in the technical aspects and in the social aspects."
"I do see her as an example to show that you can have both worlds integrated, and that the technology is not high-level stuff that only boys understand. It comes down to Earth."
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Tags: cat, girls, human, iCat, robot, science, technical, technology, women