Robot takes over nursery

“Children treat nursery robot as human”, according to the Telegraph today.

It sounds a bit over the top, but the sentiment does come directly from a study of a Sony robot (called QRIO) placed in a nursery environment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. The paper tells us: “Initially, the children treated the robot very differently than the way they treated each other. By the last session, 5 months later, they treated the robot as a peer rather than a toy.”

The robot – which stands at half-toddler height and was assisted in its actions (dancing, giggling, walking) by a human operator that sent it instructions every few minutes (which sounds like cheating to me, but the researchers say this mainly stopped it from hitting walls) – spent a total of 5 months in a classroom of toddlers. After bouts of “full behavioural repetoire” the kids really bonded with QRIO, say the researchers: they touched it in the way that they touch other kids, with an emphasis on hands and arms, hugged it, put a blanket over it when it ‘went to sleep’ on low batteries, and cried if it fell over.

Well… I have seen toddlers treat inanimate dolls like ‘peers’, and cry when their tamagotchi ‘dies’, despite the fact that these virtual pets consist of an unmoving chunk of plastic whose “full repetoire” of behaviour consists of bleeping.

But, as New Scientist and others point out, these kids did behave differently to QRIO than to an inanimate robot named Robby or other toys, like teddy bears.

It’s hardly surprising for kids to respond more to things that seem to respond to them. But whether they’ll really treat a robot exactly as they do another child, and whether a robot will really ever become an invaluable teaching assistant in the classroom, are debatable.

Apparently other robots have only been able to hold a child’s attention span for less than 10 hours, by telling stories (though I wonder how this compares to the ultimate story-teller, television, which seems to have an endless fascination for kids). By contrast this robot inspired "long-term bonding and socialization" (paper).

"The authors are drawing general conclusions ... beyond what the data alone suggest," technologist and social scientist Nathan Freier told Science – who also host the videos, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

Botley: That would be a good job for you.
Harry: You know I don't like children.
Botley: Hehehe!