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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."
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.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
most young children also treat inanimate dolls or stuffed animals as peers
why is this so groundbreaking?
"Robot Overlord" jokes are actually on topic!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
and they put me in the middle of a room full of toddlers.
Life? Don't talk to me about life.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
...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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They looked like really slick pieces of technology. Though, if I ever got one, I'd be too tempted to program it to act like Gir...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
As the father of a 2 year old and a 4 year old, I am not at all surprised that the children behaved this way. Kids in that age group have very few prejudices, and have a very down to earth perspective, so if something looks and acts vaguely like they do, they treat it with respect (in their own way).
Note that the researchers correlate treating something with some respect to treating it like a human. Many people (both children and adults) treat pets or other non-human animals in this manner.
Robiticists are apparently excited by this, but I'm going to guess (based on the fairly short linked story (yes, I RTFA), that sociologists and/or psychologists will great this with a resounding "DUH!".
(Disclaimer: I am not a roboticist, sociologist, or psychologist).
Ok, maybe it's a girl thing, but kids putting a blanket over the robot when his batteries run down is about the sweetest thing I have ever heard.
-e
(and she notes that she called it "his", inferring gender to the asexual robot.)
I'm curious as to whether the kids actually thought the robot was another kid or how much they understood what it was (I can't really remember how intelligent I was at that age...). I'd have thought a better way to make the kids take a consistent interest in the robot would be to make it do something useful, like, say, actually help in the classroom rather than just dance or giggle.
-- All your booze are belong to us.
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)
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.
Not even that. Just take a couple of yellow sponge balls, stick them together, add a couple of simple eyes, a button nose and make it dance.
Then you have the robot that everyone wants. (But can't have)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I was an only child in a neighborhood without many kids.
I really liked "Alphie", this game playing robot (circa 1979).
Had him for years, then let some other kids play with him and he broke.
Lesson learned: other kids suck.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Children have been hugging and caring for teddy-bears and dolls since forever. Dolls that talk or move get more attention. What's new?
I don't know this study has anything to do with "robots". Children this age engage in all kinds of "imitative" play. And what are they imitating? Their parents - young kids (like mine) will feed, nurse, change, put to bed, their dolls, stuffed animals, etc. The "robot" is just another vehicle (no pun intended) for this.
That being said, my kids love the Roomba. Before they could even walk, they knew exactly how to turn it on - and would crawl all over the kitchen, chasing it around! My 2-year old son would lie down next to it and put his arm around it! (Until he accidentally turned it on, and he ran screaming away from it smack into a door on the other side of the kitchen!)
I was shocked the other day when I mentioned some thing about turning on the Roomba, and my 14-month old crawled over to it, pressed the "on" button, then the "clean" button - then when it made its "beep-beep-beep" (meaning it's about to start) - she quickly dropped to her hands and crawled quickly away from it, perfectly perpendicular to what would be it's travel-path off it's docking station. I shouldn't have been surprised, her second and third words were "Robot" and "Roomba"!
So, they're toys like any other to the kids - but obviously a lot more fun! :-)
There's this concept of an "uncanny valley" where basically, something that's too close to human just looks totally off-putting.
The name is based on a graph of "likability" vs. how realistic something looks... You see that things get more likable as they get closer to being indistinguishable from real, and then all of a sudden when they get very close, but not perfect, it suddenly dips down. As an example, many people find dolls creepy because they look very human-like.
As always, Wikipedia has more on the subject and probably does a better job explaining it than I do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
Would you feel better if the kids call their wooden doll as their "new friend"? This has been going on for as long as toys have existed.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
As a kid, I don't recall covering my friends with blankets when their batteries ran down.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
People said things like "it's trying to get out of the corner" and such. It's not "trying" anything, it's just following a set of equations (that I wrote) which are slightly too simple.
What's the difference?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
... robots will become so lifelike that the teachers will try to have sex with them.
Have gnu, will travel.
Oh, but is it? And why? Knowing that some people innately prefer children, that humans find it almost impossible to completely control or suppress their sex drive, and that we can't just kill pedophiles out of hand when they are discovered - logically such a device would end up saving children from molestation? Let's assume a pedophile starts with a Roomba, and adds to it piece by piece until it resembles an animatronic underage Real Doll - at what point does it become illegal?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
"Teacher, I gave Robby my milk cause he didn't have any. Now he's making funny noises..."