In Illinois: A Better Robot?

By Donald Morrison

Take I-55 through the gently rolling shopping malls and heavily wooded station wagons south of Chicago. Just down the street from tomorrow, you will encounter the cybernetic, servomechanical, 1 1/4-acre kingdom of Ben Skora's. Don't expect road signs. "Just ask anybody for the guy with the robot," chuckles Skora.

Some human beings are gifted with perfect pitch, others with total recall. Ben Skora can hand-build just about anything, without benefit of blueprint. A high school dropout, one-time recording company owner, Skora has for the past 30 years helped pay the rent by treating drug, drinking and other behavioral problem cases with hypnosis. But he admits to a life-long addiction of his own: gadgets. One historic day six years ago, he repaired to his garage with an armload of automobile power-window assemblies and second-hand refrigerator motors worth about $2,000 at the junkyard. Three years and a psychic, $750,000 later (his labor, which he figures at $20 an hour), Skora had remade the mountain of junk in his own image and likeness, more or less. And he looked upon it and saw it was good. And he called it Arok. Following the custom among home robot builders, Arok is Skora spelled backward (without the s).

Skora had not simply built a robot; any science fair show-off can do that. He had built a better robot. At 6 ft. 8 in. and 275 lbs., Arok looks something like an air-conditioning duct on roller skates. But this man of steel can lift 125 lbs. dead weight, bend 45DEG at the waist and locomote forward or backward at a top speed of 3 m.p.h. Arok can vacuum the rug, take out the trash, serve a tray of Dr. Peppers' (Skora does not drink hard liquor).

When not engaged in light housework, Arok passes the day gazing sternly over the living room from his accustomed corner next to the TV set. He moves toward you quietly, with an air of intimidating strength. You know his limbs contain sensors that will short his circuits before he can crush your limbs, but you are reluctant to take his hand when he offers it. You know Arok's master is putting words in his mouth from across the room through a microphone in an attache' case-sized control panel, but you find yourself interviewing him with stiff formality. You know his name is Arok, but you want to call him sir. Your palms grow moist, and the room suddenly seems very small. When you point out with exaggerated amiability that his digital watch is an hour slow, he snaps, "That's Mars time, dummy." He does not suffer mortals gladly.

Beneath that obdurate, aluminum exterior beat two 12-volt automobile batteries, 15 electric motors, 35 relays and hundreds of solid-state integrated circuits. Arok has a motorcycle helmet for a skull, a rubber Frankenstein mask for a face, clothes-dryer exhaust hoses for arms, rubber gloves for hands and a firm, manly handshake. He is remote-controlled by FM radio signals (there is a microphone in his control panel and a speaker in his head). Skora, in fact, had to apply for an FCC license to ensure that commands to Arok would not be competing with Led Zeppelin or the 1001 Strings for air waves.

Arok's lips move when he speaks, or rather, when Skora speaks through him. Slip a preprogrammed tape cassette into a slot in Arok's back and he will perform a medley of his domestic hits: bend over, rotate his head 180DEG, shake your hand, tell bad jokes: "You can be replaced by a robot because robots never make mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. . ."

That joke involves an element of true confession. The fact is that Arok isn't too bright. Without close and constant supervision, Arok would gladly vacuum the dog, pour the coffee on the rug or puree the goldfish in the Cuisinart. "For me to say that he saves me work would be ridiculous," admits Skora. "Real household androids are at least 15 years away."

Since Arok was born, Skora's life has been a nonstop marathon of local television talk-show appearances (about 30, he figures) and visits from would-be agents, manufacturers and licensees (Skora recently signed a deal to license foot-high Arok toys in Japan). Arok has become a favorite on the convention and industrial-show circuit and wows 'em at bank branch openings by incinerating the ceremonial ribbon with his laser gun. His top appearance fee is $750 a day.

Still, Arok's travels are not making his master rich. Liability insurance costs $150 a day. Skora has had to let his hypnotherapy practice dwindle to two or three patients a week. Lugging a 275 lb. tin man around the country is hard work; Arok must be carefully packed in his custom-built, veneered sarcophagus with the plywood bas-relief of him on the lid. And once on the job site, things go bump in the day. Like the time on a Chicago talk show when Arok impolitely dumped a glass of water into the laps of fellow Guests Bill Bixby, John Travolta and Barbara Eden. Or the time onstage in St. Louis when he was taking a little boy for a ride on the tops of his size 60 quadruple E tin shoes, got out of Skora's FM range, demolished the scenery and broke himself in two. Asked the boy, who was unhurt: "Can you do that again?"

Skora concedes, however, that life with Arok has its lighter side. When they go to the local McDonald's together, Skora sends Arok up to place the order. The first time Arok took out the garbage, Skora made sure the garbage men were there; they sat motionless in the truck for 15 minutes afterward. Once at a Hilton hotel restaurant Arok brought down the house by strolling in and asking for a nice green salad with some 3-In-One oil.

If Arok began life as just another gadget for an automated house, he has also become-- in some peculiar way--a member of the family. Skora's wife Sharon was indifferent to her husband's creation at first, but now the couple cannot help being a bit anthropomorphic about what is their only child. They start the day by saying good morning to him. They keep a scrapbook of his press clippings. They worry about his delicate circuits the way parents worry about a nagging winter cough.

Some months ago, Skora began to fear that Arok was lonely. So now the inventor is staying up nights in his garage, amid piles of eviscerated household appliances, working on a companion masterpiece: an even better robot. Skora says Arok's new sibling will do everything Arok can, plus open doors, light cigars and perform dozens of more complicated tasks that require feedback and self-correction. He (she?) will be semismart, with microprocessors and slow-scan television to guide his (her?) actions and, Skora hopes, the ability to take instructions direct from the inventors' brain waves. Sneb, the new creation will be called, for Ben spelled backward (with the s).

Donald Morrison

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