Observations Portend Robotic Inclusion in Society

by RayRenteria on November 16, 2007

In a fascinating study carried out by Javier Movellan from the University of California, San Diego, researchers observed toddlers accepting a humanoid robot as a peer.

In previous similar studies, children quickly got bored with the robot. In this study children accepted the robot and in some cases even nurtured it. The robot was programmed to lay down when its batteries began to wane. Kids would approach it, cover it with a blanket, and say “night night” when it performed that behavior.

This study may reveal a maturing generation of Digital Natives who will accept robots as peers within their society. A Digital Native is characterized by Marc Prensky as a student who is well versed in the digital language of computers, video games, and the internet while a Digital Immigrant is that group of people who have known a world before such technologies. While the notion of an intimate relationship with a robot may sound at best different to Digital Immigrants, it may not to the next generation of Digital Natives.

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Kevin Bjorke

Making human gestures toward machines is not entirely new of course — think how often we see people “talking with their hands” while on the phone (or in Japan, bowing to the phone). Fascinating just the same.
Ray Renteria

This is true; however, in those circumstances, both users are in cyberspace trying to gesture to each other, not toward the technology. (Bruce Sterling describes cyberspace as that place you go when you’re on the phone.)

In Movellan’s observations, the gestures are targeted directly toward an animate object whose sole purpose is to interact with humans and evoke emotional responses. An inanimate version of the robot was also put in the children’s environment as a control in the study. The children got bored with it and didn’t gain the same kind of attachment.