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Robot Becomes One of the Kids

Posted by kdawson on from the everybody-say-awwww dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that toddlers treat a small robot as a peer rather than a toy. A team from the University of California, San Diego, placed Sony's QRIO in a classroom of kids aged 18 months to 2 years and watched them interact. Over time the children grew to treat the robot as one of them — playing games with the robot, hugging it, and covering it up with a blanket when its batteries ran down."

1 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So? by Thornburg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mod parent "Didn't RFTA". (aka Overrated)

    The researches had a control robot that didn't interact but was otherwise the same, and the kids treated them very differently.

    Half your point is valid, but the flippant comment is inaccurate and demonstrates that you didn't take the 90 seconds necessary to read the very short article.