The Science of Human-Robot Love

An anonymous reader writes "By harnessing a new sphere of science called 'lovotics', Hooman Samani, an artificial intelligence researcher at the Social Robotics Lab at the National University of Singapore, believes it is possible to engineer love between humans and robots. Samani's robots have artificial psychological and biological systems that mimic the human brain and endocrine systems, and use movements, sounds, and lights to show their mood and level of affection for a human."

Comments

Only a New Generation of Neo-Pet. A Neo-Neo-Pet.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this neuro-babble? They misspelled Serotonin in the video, they mention Endorphin in that list as if it's a single compound and not an entire class of neurotransmitters, and they think that specific mixes of these chemicals can elicit exact feelings and emotions. "Well Jim, this human has a 1:3:2.8:6 ratio of Oxytocin, Dopamine, Secrotonin [sic], and Endorphin, it must clearly be Tired." I really don't expect there to be even an outline of an algorithm for a current personality based on hormone level since there haven't been concrete neuronal correlates of applying hormones to specific parts of the brain (since they're transmitted through the bloodstream and therefore are whole-body modifiers, making that stupid brain scan animation moot). Why not just call this a Furbie with a different casing? Unless they can show me the underlying algorithm of how the robot decides its emotions, then I can't put it past a simple Tomagotchi program.