Why Do Toddlers Love Robots?
Posted on November 25th, 2007 in Household
An article appearing in November’s issue of the IEEE Spectrum (a magazine written by and for electrical engineers), asks the question, “Why do toddlers love robots?”. The answer, it seems, lies not in their cute and fuzzy appearance, but more in their ability to be unpredictable and resond to interaction. To arrive at this conclusion, a Sony Qrio robot was placed in the company of a group of 10 – 24 month old children, and the children were observed to see how interested they were in the robot. “The researchers found that the key to Qrio’s popularity was its ability to move and respond to the children in a way that was closely timed to the activity around it.”
The research is being done by Fumihide Tanaka as part of a project seeking to develop robotic teacher’s assistants (I’m going to ignore just how scary this sounds). Researchers found that since the children were very young, responding to emotions was moe important that mimicing true human behavior. They also found that if Qrio’s behaviors were limited and predictable, the once oh-so-popular robotic playmate was soon discarded.
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June 9th, 2008 at 21:16
Good point Michael. I feel the same. Issac Asimov talked briefly about this problem in one of his books in the Robot Series, [U]The Naked Sun[/U].
Certainly a robot would never give a kid a well deserved beating for bad behavior. Robots (or video games for that matter) are a poor substitute to a big family and lots of time outdoors.
June 9th, 2008 at 21:16
So I wonder how fundamentally humanity will change if kids are raised by and learn social interaction from robots? I wonder if the spate of rudeness and lack of personal interaction is a factor of population or instead scads of kids who learn social interaction from TVs and video games…? :roll
June 9th, 2008 at 21:16
There is no such thing as a “well deserved beating”!
Only sick people beat their kids – it destroys their integrity, self-esteem. I would prefer friendly robots to aggressive grownups any time.
June 9th, 2008 at 21:16
Mikkel,
That’s a bit of what we call, “circular reasoning”.
Q: Why do you think only sick people beat their kids?
A: Because they’re sick.
Q: Why are they sick?
A: Because they beat their kids.
I’ve had my fair share of spankings in my day, and I can safely say my “self esteem” is quite well.
August 14th, 2009 at 16:32
Spare the stick, spoil the child.