Children Perceive Humanoid Robot as Emotional, Moral Being
April 6th, 2012I’m posting this more for its comedic value than because I think it’ll happen anytime soon.
My four-year-old son, left to his own devices, would destroy that bot inside of ten minutes. His goal wouldn’t be to destroy it; he just wants to figure out what makes machines go. If he had access to screw drivers, wrenches and hammers, it would be on like Donkey Kong.
So, tell me another one about the robotic child minders and I’ll be waiting to see some good posts on Shit My Kids Ruined after children encounter these types of robots in real-world settings.
Via: PhysOrg:
Robot nannies could diminish child care worries for parents of young children. Equipped with alarms and monitoring capabilities to guard children from harm, a robot nanny would let parents leave youngsters at home without a babysitter.
Sign us up, parents might say.
Human-like robot babysitters are in the works, but it’s unclear at this early stage what children’s relationships with these humanoids will be like and what dangers lurk in this convenient-sounding technology.
Will the robots do more than keep children safe and entertained? Will they be capable of fostering social interactions, emotional attachment, intellectual growth and other cognitive aspects of human existence? Will children treat these caregivers as personified entities, or like servants or tools that can be bought and sold, misused or ignored?
“We need to talk about how to best design social robots for children, because corporations will go with the design that makes the most money, not necessarily what’s best for children” said Peter Kahn, associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington. “In developing robot nannies, we should be concerned with how we might be dumbing down relationships and stunting the emotional and intellectual growth of children.”
To guide robot design, Kahn and his research team are exploring how children interact socially with a humanoid robot. In a new study, the researchers report that children exchanged social pleasantries, such as shaking hands, hugging and making small talk, with a remotely controlled human-like robot (Robovie) that appeared autonomous. Nearly 80 percent of the children – an even mix of 90 boys and girls, aged 9, 12 or 15 – believed that the robot was intelligent, and 60 percent believed it had feelings.
In Other News: New DARPA Grand Challenge for Humanoid Robots
Research Credit: midnightagain
i wonder how long before an fbi body language expert and/or human lie detector would consider something like this useful.
or for that matter how long before a buddhist trained monk would feel “responsible” for something like this, being as aware or more so than many insects. life as sacred yo