• Question: Is it possible to create a robot that can give you the same amount of love as a pet?

    Asked by KaseyCJ12 to Iulia, Katie, Mateusz, Ollie, Siobhan on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Iulia Motoc

      Iulia Motoc answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think that is possible yet. We cannot understand emotions right now, so we cannot make a robot have emotions. We can “fake” emotions for a robot, for example, if you are no where near the robot, when it sees you again it will become happy and say it missed you. However, this will not be a genuine emotion, it is just something we made it to do.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      Iulia points out one of the big debates in robotics: can robots really feel emotions?

      We can certainly program a robot to like you, even if you behave badly towards it. Robot pets can certainly be warm and fuzzy too – check out Paro – the robotic seal, and JustoCat – the robotic cat 🙂

      We are still ways away from any robot behaving exactly like a dog or a cat in every way. But we are starting to see people build relationships with robots that are akin to how you love your pet, and your pet loves you back. It’s one of the points of my study to investigate such relationships 🙂

      As of now – all you can do is to try and see for yourself. I know there are people in Japan and USA who have quite deep relationships with their devices, but it’s far from mainstream.

    • Photo: Siobhan Duncan

      Siobhan Duncan answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      It depends which pet! I have two cats, one who is always climbing onto my lap and cuddling me, the other who runs away from me and just wants to be fed.

      On my profile, I now have a photo of me holding a small robot dog. This robot was built to pretend to be a dog and it reacts when you pet it on it’s back, behind it’s ears and under it’s chin.

      There was a time when I was petting it, where I felt like the robot was enjoying getting petted. But that was just my brain making me think that way, rather than the robot was actually enjoying it. The robot was pretending very well and was just fooling me into thinking that it was enjoying the attention.

      Robots can’t love at the moment, but some people are working really hard to make them act like they do. These types of robots would make really good therapy toys for people who are allergic to animals, or who can’t look after one for some reason.

      But why don’t you become an engineer and build robot pets that can love their owners?

      Siobhan

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