Driving us sane

Pablo Paredes, PhD, a Stanford Medicine instructor, is the mastermind and engineer behind what he calls “the mindful commute.” It’s a collection of gadgets — including chatbots, steering wheels that sense stress and car seats that vibrate in sync with your heartbeat — that aim to transform the daily schlep to and from the office into a sanctioned time to cultivate your mental well-being.

I had a chance to demo the various technologies installed in Paredes’ well-being-mobile, as I fondly dubbed it, one of which had me chatting with a suite of kindly robots. At their core, these bots are like robot therapists. The idea: You tell them what’s ailing you; they help you think it through or come to a solution.

I tested a few, each of which takes a different approach to curtailing stress. One — my personal favorite, Sir Laughs-A-Bot — helps you find something humorous about the situation; one encourages you to engage in positive thinking; another helps you sleuth out the root of the stress.

When I arrived at Paredes’ lab for the chatbot demo, Hiroshi Mendoza, the lead graduate student on the project, gave me the rundown.

“You’ll take that car and drive it around campus. When you leave, the chatbot will talk to you,” he said. “And you’ll talk back.”

Easy enough. Buckled in and ready to divulge my biggest stresses to a little robot, I took the car out for a spin. As I turned out of the lab, the bot spoke up.

“Hi! I’m Sir Laughs-A-Bot. I’m here to help you deal with your stress. Can you tell me a little about a recent event that’s making you stressed?”