

Discovering a Soft Spot for Circuitry - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html

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Groxx
An important quote, IMO:

> _Part of the seal’s appeal, according to Dr. Takanori Shibata, the computer
> scientist who invented Paro with financing from the Japanese government,
> stems from a kind of robotic sleight of hand. Scientists have observed that
> people tend to dislike robots whose behavior does not match their
> preconceptions. Because the technology was not sophisticated enough to
> conjure any animal accurately, he chose one that was unfamiliar, but still
> lovable enough that people could project their imaginations onto it. “People
> think of Paro,” he said, “as ‘like living.’ ”_

Looks like they're landing pretty near the non-living side of the uncanny
valley. Enough to talk to / think more about, but not enough to be weird.

There's also quotes from patients with them, and about how a blinking-bear
didn't work in the least, and how a number of patients are rather drastically
improved by having one / being around one.

Some of which is probably the shiny-new-thing glow, but some of it isn't.
Also, many people around those ages are near-hostile to tech, but are
accepting of this. Interesting.

~~~
demallien
More importantly, this suggests a potential direction for UI to take in a
wider range of applications. I know Clippy was a dreadful failure, but maybe
the tech just wasn't up to it yet. With all the extra cores that are coming on
line in modern computers, we are going to have processing cycles to spare, and
this would be a way of using that power in a way that would directly benefit
the user experience. To give an example, in my flat, my PC is always on and
always has a webcam plugged in - I'd pay good money for a program that
identified when my flat was getting messy and started to nag me to clean up.
Something like that that actually works, I'd be willing to spend 100E on
without even thinking about it.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Single page:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html?_r=1&...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

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jamesbritt
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