Intelligent machines: Will we accept robot revolution? (abridged)
By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter
7 October 2015
Would you share your home with a robot or work side by side with one? People are starting to do both, which has put the relationship we have with them under the spotlight and exposed both our love and fear of the machines that are increasingly becoming a crucial part of our lives.
In Japan they grow so attached to their robot dogs that they hold funerals for them when they "die".
Sony, the firm that began making the popular Aibo toys in 1999, decided to stop offering repairs in 2014, meaning once they broke down they were fit only for the scrapheap.
But people weren't willing to throw them in the rubbish bin, wanting instead to say goodbye to them in the same way you would to a human or pet.
Growing irrationally attached to machines is a common human trait as Kate Darling, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, found out when she started a workshop asking people to torture the loveable robotic dinosaur toy Pleo.
"People wouldn't do it. We had to threaten that we'd destroy the dinosaurs if they didn't," she said.
So why do people find it so difficult to be mean to a machine?
"We have a natural tendency to anthropomorphise and social robots that mimic our movements, sounds, we subconsciously associate with emotions and feelings," Ms Darling told the BBC.
The focus of mass-market robots is on making them as cute and non-threatening as possible.
Pepper, a robotic companion that recently went on sale in Japan, is the ultimate in cute-looking robots.
It is also hardwired to understand human emotions.
In order to allow it to decode emotions, Pepper is played a video of someone speaking nonsense first angrily and then happily so that it will recognise the different voice patterns.
Vincent Clerc, who led the project to design Pepper, told a recent conference in Grenoble: "We want people to be emotionally connected and involved with robots. We don't want a robot to be a simple machine like a vacuum cleaner. If you are tired, you look tired. And you want a robot that recognises when you look tired."