Dr. Machiel Van der Loos forwarded me an article on Paro from the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago. Paro is a furry baby seal robot with the potential to impact people emotionally: it has two huge eyes that can stare at you adoringly and it can move its body parts like a real pup. Emotional bonds with artifacts, such as objects, etc, have been discussed for hundreds and thousands of years in literature. The question for today’s discussion is, ‘Would our emotional bonds with Paro lead to a happy ending, or an ethical ending?’

‘Robots That Care’ is an interesting summary piece from New Yorker that came out early this week.
It gives a summary of what studies have been done, and are being done in the field of therapy robots.
Dr. Mataric (University of Southern California), who has been studying the human-robot interaction side of therapy robots, is the main scientist introduced in the article. Some of her studies introduced in the article include the effect of robot’s personality in motivating stroke patients, and effectiveness of human-robot versus human-computer interaction with Alzheimer’s patients.
CosmoBot, a Wizard …