Film by ASU professor examines an Arkansas town's decision to buy hybrid police cars

When filmmakers dream of scoring prestigious screenings, the names that pop in their minds tend to be Cannes, Toronto or Sundance.

Not in Detroit. And not at a car show.

But an Arizona State University professor couldn’t be happier that his short film is being screened today at the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.                 

Peter Byck’s “Hybrid Law” is about a small-town police department in Arkansas, which awkwardly, but lovingly, embraced a new fleet of Toyota Camry hybrid patrol cars. It is being screened in Detroit by Toyota.

“We didn’t make this for Toyota,” Byck said. “We didn’t even know they were driving Toyotas.”

Byck, a professor of practice in both the School of Sustainability and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is the director, writer and producer of “Carbon Nation,” an acclaimed 2010 documentary about climate-change solutions. “Hybrid Law” is part of a series of short films being created by Byck promoting a low-carbon economy. They are being produced in affiliation with ASU.

“Hybrid Law” paints a picture of a traditional small American town where the police love their traditions, but come to appreciate something very new.

Sergeant Don Cleek and Officer Kevin Yeagle of the Arkadelphia, Arkansas, Police Department, stand by their patrol cars — a Crown Victoria and a Camry hybrid — at the beginning of the film.

“He’s got the modern submachine gun, and the modern Toyota car,” Cleek said in his police uniform. “He carries a modern Glock. I drive a good old American V-8 with a rear wheel and a full frame like they were meant to be, (I carry) a wood and steel rifle, like they were meant to be, and a 1911 that was designed in 1911 by John Moses Browning. I’m old. He’s young.”

Yeagle, driving his hybrid, admits he enjoys it.

“I’ve gotten a few snickers, of course, when I tell friends at other departments what I’m driving,” he said. “I don’t want to make myself out to be a green energy person, either. About as far as I’ve gone with that is I hate littering.”

Asked by Byck if he’d go back to driving a Crown Vic, Yeagle simply said, “No.”

Byck was screening “Carbon Nation” in Fayetteville, Arkansas, when someone mentioned the small-town police department that embraced hybrid cars — and was doing a better job because of it.

“I thought, ‘Wow. What a story,’ ” Byck said.

After the police chief and city manager both agreed to the filming, Byck spent two days in the central Arkansas town, with a population of about 10,000.

“I knew when I was filming it, ‘This is really good. They have a good story,’ ” Byck said. “It’s a positive story, and it’s one of those stories we hunt for in our Carbon Nation work — show me good money-saving ways to be cleaner. Those are the stories we hunt for. We hunt for good characters.”

“The only noise you’re going to hear is the tires crunching on the gravel.”
— Arkadelphia Police Chief Al Harris

Initially the cars were not an easy sell to either the rank and file or management.

“When I first heard about the Camrys they were going to order, I was dead set against it,” Cleek said. “Police cars are supposed to be rear-wheel drive, and V-8s, and a lot of room, and be able to go through ditches and stuff.”

“I just dismissed it,” Police Chief Al Harris said. “All I thought was they’re small and don’t have any power.”

Then he and city manager Jimmy Bolt went for test drives.

“One, they’re not little, and two, the performance is a lot better than I’d given them credit for,” Harris said.

The effects of the switch were evident, too.

By replacing 10 Crown Victorias with 10 Toyota Camry hybrids, the department increased patrols, decreased maintenance and cut down so much on fuel that the entire city staff enjoyed a 3 percent wage increase. One officer said he has gone from filling up his gas tank twice per shift to once.

There was even a benefit no one saw coming, and that some still don’t.

“The only noise you’re going to hear is the tires crunching on the gravel,” Harris said. “We call it the stealth mode. You can literally be on top of something before the bad guys realize you’re there.”

The film shows that people are coming on board with green living outside of San Francisco or San Jose.

“This idea that early adoption is owned by the coasts is just wrong,” Byck said. “That’s why this story works so well — because it’s unexpected. I’m seeing innovation and early adoption everywhere. It’s just not known yet. … We’ve got to tell those stories more and more and more. It shouldn’t be thought of as a place of early adoption. It should be celebrated.”

And in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, it is.

“We all want to do right by our world we live in,” Bolt said. “Green is popular, but it also has to be practical.”

The image at the top of this page is a screen shot from Peter Byck's film "Hybrid Law."

Scott Seckel

Reporter , ASU News

ASU professor says best way to keep resolutions is to make them 'SMART'

It's the middle of January. How are those New Year's resolutions going?

If you're like most people, they're swiftly receding from memory. According to Forbes, 63 percent of Americans make resolutions, but only 8 percent keep them.

So why do we bother, year after year, if the failure rate is so high?

Paul Karoly, a psychology professor at Arizona State University, might know why. Karoly studies goals and motivation and claims a resolution is just a cultural function.

“What is a New Year's resolution? It’s a meme,” Karoly said. “It’s a culturally given thing. ‘Why don’t I lose weight, or get healthier?’ It has very little meaning besides that."

Karoly said the reason why we make them is because it's in line with Skinner’s Verbal Operant: where people enjoy praise — especially drunk people — and resolutions are an insincere way to get praise.

“You get drunk, you're with drunk people. You say something positive like ‘I am going to lose weight!’ and then everybody congratulates you for thinking that,” Karoly said. “Then you sober up and say, 'Tomorrow I’ll do that,' and you never do it.”

Even if you weren’t knocking a couple back when you made the resolution, adding onto a goal’s nearly inevitable failure is the abstinence violation effect, referring to a person's sense of loss of control over his or her behavior that has an overwhelming and demoralizing effect. For example, if you made a resolution to stop eating chips and you have one chip, you proceed to have the full bag because you already failed by eating one.

When applying it to other common resolutions like “go to the gym four times this week” or “quit smoking,” it becomes evident how easy it can seem to fail.

However, he still finds the process of New Year’s resolutions a bit misleading — and a waste of time.

“New Year’s resolutions are an example of weak intentions. Let's do something else,” Karoly said. “Make them lasting. If we were to make them last, if we had to, let's make it realistic. Let's make it smart.”

USDA Under Secretary Katie Wilson stops at ASU to talk about nutritional guidelines and food access

Few can fire up a crowd quite like Dr. Katie Wilson when it comes to talking people into eating their fruits and vegetables.

It may not sound like a sexy job, but it’s hers. And she does it well.

As the USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services under President Barack Obama, Wilson (pictured above, right) is responsible for improving the health and well-being of Americans by developing and promoting science-based dietary guidance and administering the USDA’s 15 nutrition assistance programs.

Prior to joining USDA, Wilson spent 23 years as a school nutrition director in several Wisconsin public school districts, served five years as the executive director for the National Food Service Management Institute, and was an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi.

On Thursday, Wilson visited with more than 50 students, faculty and researchers in ASU’s College of Health Solutions on the Downtown Phoenix campus to discuss how universities and educators helped shape the recently released USDA Dietary Guidelines — which are developed every five years.  

“School nutrition programs should be educational labs for children, and all of you need to be advocates for them,” Wilson said. “I encourage you all to get involved in the process because we need to hear your voice and we need your research and expertise.”

Wilson, who started her appointment on May 3, 2015, spoke to ASU Now about her surprise visit to ASU, how national nutritional policy is created and the role and function of the USDA.

Question: Your call to action for future teachers and researchers to get involved in the political process is interesting. Why is it so important for nutritional guidelines?

Answer: Writing regulation at the regulatory level means we’re only as good as what the scientists and researchers know and tell us. The field of nutrition in particular is evolving. We really don’t know a whole lot because it keeps changing, and that’s because the research keeps changing. We haven’t been dealing with nutrition as long as we have, specifically, with other kinds of issues. It’s also not a concrete issue. It’s very passionate, it’s very personal, it changes upon your demographic and age group, what your cultural preferences and experiences are. I think that if we can get people involved in the American process of writing these things, then we’re much further ahead.

Q: There are many issues behind food — social, economical, political — that go behind the making of policy. Is it the hardest aspect of your job, with so many voices and factors weighing in on the process?

A: That’s what makes it so difficult to deal with in this arena. It’s not cut and dry. It’s neither this nor that. Again, I think that’s why we have to go back to the American public and say, “That works. That doesn’t work.” What are we seeing? What are the trends? Then we have to listen to the scientists and how they have advanced nutrition to see how it reacts with the body and the whole medical aspect of it. We’ve made a lot of advances in the last 10 years, so we know a little more.

Q: There are differing opinions about funding free-meal programs. What are your thoughts on the issue?

A: I really and truly believe that anyone of us could fall on hardship tomorrow. We can’t get people back into the mainstream if they’re hungry. It just can’t be. We know that children don’t learn well if they’re hungry. The same with adults. You can’t function if you’re hungry and if you’re a single parent doing multiple jobs or managing children from multiple schools or having to figure out public transportation to get to your destination or job. If you’re hungry on top of all of that, there’s no way to figure it out. So how do we get people back on their feet and into the mainstream if they’re hungry? … We have the ability to feed everybody in this country and so we just have to figure out a way to make sure they get it.

Q: Most of your programs seem to be geared toward not only feeding children but also educating them about nutrition. We constantly hear about how America has become more obese as a nation, so when will we see that shift in behavior?

A: We have already started to see changes in schools regarding nutrition. Some of it is anecdotal; some of it is more research-based. There’s a brand-new article that just published in the American Medical Journal of Pediatrics. It shows that there’s a big difference in what they’re choosing and consuming. And they’re not being forced to. It’s a choice. We are seeing a shift. We’re seeing a difference because industry is saying, “Look, these healthy products are so popular that we’re going to put them in the commercial market.” We’re beginning to see a shift in the general population because they are asking for more information on food labels. They’re interested. The fact that we got tens of thousands of people giving their input and commenting on the USDA Dietary Guidelines for 2015 says people are paying attention. I believe people are beginning to relate good nutrition to a healthy lifestyle and longevity. We are beginning to see those changes in children, even though it takes time.

Q: It’s obvious you are passionate about what you do and teach.

A: I am. Every day I go home I know I’ve fought some battle somewhere that gave some kid access to food … and I’m OK with that.

Top photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

ASU engineer exploring new frontiers in human-robot collaborations

Imagine an assembly robot that collaborates with a human to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture. The robot would need to analyze the movements of the human to avoid potentially hazardous collisions.

Heni Ben Amor (pictured left) is trying to make that situation become closer to reality by helping robots better understand and respond to human behavior. For instance, the assembly robot may learn that it must hand over a screwdriver whenever a human is stretching out an arm.

Ben Amor, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, is working to make advances in human-robot collaboration and on identifying the importance of such collaborations.

“I develop new methods that allow a robot to work in close proximity with human partners,” he said. “To ensure safe interaction, autonomous robots need to include movements and actions of human partners into their decision-making process.”

There is a widespread misconception that robots will replace humans in all workplaces, Ben Amor said. While it is true that robots can perform mundane, repetitive tasks better than humans, there are still many tasks at which humans are way better than robots.

“For humans, opening a fridge is not a particularly difficult thing to do. For robots, however, this can be a daunting challenge.”
— Heni Ben Amor, ASU assistant professor of computer science and engineering

He believes in a combination of robotic strength and speed on one side, and human decision-making, creativity and dexterity on the other side of a symbiotic relationship between robot and human.

“A fascinating aspect of working with robots is discovering how challenging even presumably simple tasks can be for a machine,” he said. “For humans, opening a fridge is not a particularly difficult thing to do. For robots, however, this can be a daunting challenge.”

Even after having a human program all the steps involved, “it may actually take the robot more than five minutes to accomplish the task. It is therefore very inspiring to see how nature managed to find very elegant and versatile solutions to similarly difficult problems,” Ben Amor said.

“I am particularly intrigued by learning capabilities of biological systems,” he said. “Humans and animals often learn to adapt and change their behavior whenever faced with a new challenge.”

Human-robot collaboration has become an important aspect of many applications of robotic technologies, such as in the automotive industry.

There is a strong interest in bringing human and robot capabilities together. For many tasks, human skills remain important, but  other tasks could best be accomplished by the strength and agility of robots. Deploying robots to help humans in physically demanding tasks could, for instance, lead to a significant reduction in work-related injuries.

Ben Amor is intrigued by machine learning involving robots. He wants to find out if robots can learn how to solve tasks on its own, by employing a human-like trial-and-error strategy to acquire new motor skills or imitating observed human behaviors and learning to program themselves based on what they observe.

“One idea that I am particularly fascinated by is a robot that reads a manual to learn to program itself,” he said.

He expands on the idea of robot assembling IKEA furniture. All of the pieces of furniture come with a manual that is originally intended for humans. He hopes that in the future a robot could scan the manuals and extract the knowledge it needs to program itself to do the assembly.

“I think for the acceptance of robots in many application domains it is important to reduce the programming effort that is currently involved," he said. “Robot learning can help eliminate this effort and thereby enable even laymen to train or program a new robot.”

One area Ben Amor is looking to investigate further is bi-manual grasping and manipulation by robots. Typically, robotic technologies employed in manufacturing operations use only one arm to perform various tasks. He wants to develop methods that give robots increased dexterity so they can match the ability of humans in using two hands and arms.

Written by Erik Wirtanen, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
480-727-1957, erik.wirtanen@asu.edu

Top photo: Methods developed in Heni Ben Amor’s lab enable robot assistants to anticipate the actions of human co-workers and help whenever needed. Photo courtesy of ASU’s Interactive Robotics Lab.