Some robots like to morph into a human form and shoot you (like in T2).  Some robots like to take over your spacecraft and shoot you (like in Battlestar Galactica.)  Some robots like to have identical evil twin brothers that shoot you with phasers (Star Trek).  And still some other robots will terminate your life functions while you lie helpless in suspended animation (2001).

If sci-fi has taught us nothing else, it’s that your robot will kill you one day.  (It’s good to see that the US military is putting this lesson to good use in Pakistan; I can’t imagine any way THAT little technology could go awry.)

So that’s why it’s probably appealing that somebody has created a robot too dumb to kill anybody.  It’s called the tweenbot.  Which in some obscure language must translate to “brown paper lunch bag with smiley face drawn on it”.

And that’s exactly what the Tweenbot looks like.  It was a research project for NYU ITP student Kacie Kinzer.  If you’ve never heard of the NYU “ITP” grad program—I hadn’t—it describes itself as the “Center for the Recently Possible”.  You know how the Sharper Image sells a whole bunch of crap that uses fiber optics and lasers to look really cool but not function in any useful way?  The NYU ITP center does kinda the same thing—except it probably costs $40,000 a year instead of 99.99 (which is what everything at the Sharper Image costs, until it goes on clearance at TJ Maxx for 5.99).

Kinzer created the Tweenbot to answer one simple question:  Are New Yorkers really @ssholes?

The answer?  Surprisingly not.

Here’s how it works:  Build a stupid robot that’s too cute for words and is only capable of going forward.  No sensors. No artificial intelligence.  No weapons.  No fun.  Then attach a sign to it that’s drawn by the same girl who drew hearts, flowers, and teddy bears all over your high school yearbook.  The sign should say (in happy bubble letters with appropriately ridiculous flourishes) “HELP ME. I need to get to the Southwest corner of Washington Square Park.”  Then take it to the Northeast corner and let it loose.

42 minutes and 29 pedestrian helpers later, the robot will arrive at its goal.

Kinzer believes that this says something about the Washington Square Park crowd; that it says something about New Yorkers; that it says something about human nature itself.

I think that it says something about the power of cute.

And makes me want to hurl just a little bit.