Robot Becomes One of the Kids

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."

Comments

They do the same with a dog..

[moogied]

or any pet for that matter.

For example.. take this sentence:

games with the robot, hugging it, and covering it up with a blanket and replace robot with dog.

Would that be news worthy? No. Why? Because its in the nature of most children to play games and take cares of others(because that is what people do to them.) This does not mean they see it as a peer. They see it as a pet.

Re:They do the same with a dog..

[mdobossy]

and replace robot with dog. What I found most interesting, however, is the difference between how the children interacted with 1) a more "robotic" control robot, 2) the "more human" robot when it ceases to act "more human". Sure a kid will nurture/care for a pet, but it is very different than how they treat a stuffed animal/toy.

Re:They do the same with a dog..

[Itninja]

To an 18 month old child, I doubt there much difference between the way they treat a pet and the way they treat a peer. For that matter, between nearly any object and a peer. Children will anthropomorphize anything. I've seen kids try to share their PB & J sandwich with a VCR. Is the VCR a peer? I guess in some abstract, childish way, it is. The real test is when they start competing with a parent for the affections of the robot. I still think my Mom likes her Roomba more than me....

Re:They do the same with a dog..

[Device666]

Actually very young kids don't treat animals so much different than toys. I have seen a kid trying to use a guineepig as a little toy car. It's also no wonder kids grab the tails of cats, they would do the same with their stuffed whinnie the pooh bear. At a young age they mixup animals a lot calling a horse sheep etc. So it's not that difficult to imagine mixing up pets and robots (toys).

yeah..

[resfilter]

most young children also treat inanimate dolls or stuffed animals as peers

why is this so groundbreaking?

SF writers got it wrong about "androids..."

[dpbsmith]

...Androids will not need to mimic human appearance, skin resilience and temperature, etc. with high fidelity.

Human beings are sufficiently capable of anthropomorphizing... or empathizing... to treat even obviously non-humanoid things as human. (As witness the bonding between humans and pets).

Robots only need to be reasonably human-like in appearance and behavior, and humans will meet them more than halfway.

And, of course, and unfortunately, human beings are also capable of treating actual human beings as not human.

Re:SF writers got it wrong about "androids..."

[hellergood]

Agreed! :)

Not only that...

[Shauni]

People are probably more likely to "socialize" with a robot if they can put it in its own separate category easily. Interacting with a non-human intelligence yet human container is bound to be disturbing (it's one of the sources of the uncanny valley)

Human-assisted...

[evilviper]

Just one very big problem:

A human operator could also make the robot turn its gaze towards a child or wave as they went away.

So it isn't just a robot, artificially intelligent enough to fool toddlers. It's something of a human-controlled puppet, with them telling it to do more advanced things than it could figure out on its own.

So, I guess, basically a PR stunt for Sony.