Robot Pets Almost as Good as Real Ones?

Gallamine writes "Many people claim that pets are good for their owners. But, what about robot pets? Some scientists at the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue's Veterinary school say yes, robot pets can benefit humans. Petting an AIBO caused the human stress hormone cortisol to decrease in patients, much like a real dog, although the effects weren't as pronounced. Also, AIBOs sent to nursing homes caused the residents to be less depressed and lonely. Similar research is being done by Dr. Dr. Takanori Shibata with his robotic seal named Pero."

No comparison

[Jason1729]

A real dog is devoted to its master and euphoricly happy to see him/her.

A robot dog is a pile of parts running a program.

Maybe not "as good as" but they definitely help.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, look at how much comfort and companionship a child can get from a simple teddy bear. Same concept, your imagination will create a personality for your little friend if necessary.

why wonder, did you not have a teddybear?

[Anonymous Coward]

why should this effect not be understandable? when we were kids, we had plush-friends that helped us e.g. falling asleep. now having a moving, mechanic sounding fluffy battery-powered friend, that only seems to express the ongoing of industrialisation / techdom.
i really don't wonder =)

Re:No comparison

[MikeFM]

It depends how smart your robot dog is. I've had some robotic and digital pets that were very intelligent and because they had built-in emotion systems and learning they could learn love, hate, loyalty, etc. Not as good as a real animal yet but it does have the benefit that when it breaks you can fix it which is something I sadly cannot say of my real pets which I've lost many of over the years.

Re:No comparison

[Bazzalisk]

A robot dog is a pile of parts running a program.

So is a real dog, just the parts are squishier and the programme is more complex.

Re:Maybe not "as good as" but they definitely help

[MikeFM]

Good point, I wonder how a non-intelligent psuedo-pet compares to a more intelligent model so far as the benefits on the human psyche. Anything we associate with comfort and stability I imagine would have a strong bond with how we react to them.

For example a favorite pair of jeans or any similar item. We're not even associating them with a living being but we still tend to personify them and cling to them as something we'd miss even if we replaced them with an identical item.

Robot dog or entertainment center? You pick ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens when you give the patients brand new 60" LCD TVs instead? Is it really pets, or just the novelty of new toys?

Re:No comparison

[Chatsubo]

You are a pile of atoms arranged a certain way. Running an adaptive neural network.

If you make a robotic dog that looks real, and acts all happy when it sees it's owner. What makes it less real than an organic dog?

When the novelty is gone

[Linus Sixpack]

A cool new thing might make sick and old people less bored. They are people after all. A new robot would make my day!

What happens when every institurion has its IBO? Will they be as interesting as a dog when the novelty runs out? I don't think so.

I'd really worry about a fleet of 'entertainment' robots looking after our sick and aged. Seems like a classic setting for a robot uprising story.

ls

Real animal

[Anonymous Coward]

I do understand that not all can have a real animal.. but.. for the rest of you, theres alot of loney pets in diffrent shelters around your country, why not save one? I did, and I cant understand how attached I got to the little one, his now a part of the family. Amazing experience as I never had any animals before, and they dont require alot of maintainance either.. easyer then keeping a flower alive, as pets complain when they need food/water.. :-)

Drinking Bird

[giafly]

I once owned a drinking bird [rotten.com], but I can't say I noticed any health benefits from my robot pet.

I prefer plants instead as they are easy to care for and bring real health benefits [google.co.uk].

Animal Assisted Therapy

[sczimme]

But there are some places where they can't live, such as nursing homes. So can a robot pet provoke the same reactions?

Not to nitpick, but this is not always true. I have an elderly relative in a nursing home, and the home itself has a canine companion. (However, I can see how it would be difficult/impossible for individual residents to have pets.)

Second, the effects of Animal Assisted Therapy [google.com] are well known. It makes sense that a replicant (like the Aibo) that offers a subset of relevant canine functionality could offer a subset of the health benefits as well.

Can it catch a frisbee?

[cherokee158]

I have yet to see a robot dog that can follow my kid down the stairs, eating every single potato chip he drops.

Why spend hundreds of dollars on a anthropomorphic toaster by Sony with a crap warranty when you can own a miracle of millions of years of evolution that will last up to 15 years for next to nothing?

Maybe its not only pets...

[Saggi]

When I come home I turn on my computer. I browse a bit. Read slashdot. Checkup on a few online strategic games to see how things are going, update my website, code a bit...

All these actions are to make me feel alive. To puzzle with tiny bits in my life. A dog, cat, fish etc. would be the same.

When I was a child I had an aquarium. I could look at it. I needed to feed the fish. Sometimes I had to clean it up. It usually took several hours but was quite fun. Other times I bought a new fish and put into the tank.

We also had a dog. It was always happy to see me. It greeted me when I came from school. I hated when it was my turn to go out with it, especially when the weather was bad, but that's a part of life.

And now I pet my computer. It do make me feel happy. Time goes by. I have something to do.

Maybe it's not about the pet... maybe it's about having something (slightly) useful to do when we come home from a long day at work. Something relaxing. Something to take our minds away from work and into idle mode... just maybe.

Re:No comparison

[GuidoW]

No, a robot pet can never learn love, loyalty, hate or other emotions. It can at best closely mimic the behaviour caused by these emotions in real animals.

Look on the bright side dude!

[Savage-Rabbit]

A robot dog is a pile of parts running a program.

At least you won't feel guilty about vivisecting your robot dog... and it is alot less messy.

Hump?

[brunes69]

I have never seen a fixed cat hump anything.

And you forgot three important ones - play, purr, and cuddle. No dog is as cute as a playing cat. And my cats would be on anti-depressants if they didn't get to cuddle with someone at least once a day.

Re:No comparison

[GuidoW]

No, a brain works fundamentally different from a computer. True, a very much evolved computer may show emergent characteristics that might be interpreted as consciousness and emotions, but those would likely bear little resemblances to our idea of emotions.

Anyway, everything we have right now in this department is just a cheap, superficial copy of the real thing.

Re:No comparison

[jimmypw]

What makes it less real than an organic dog?

The fact that you know that it'll never love you. At the end of the day Inteligence is not intelegence if it is artificiall. Flick a real dog on the nose and after time it'll start to hate ou. Flick a robot on the nose for 100 ys and it'll think that you are playing with it every time.

I Remember the bad

[MeAndMyX-ActoKnife]

Once I had a dog. One time I rolled off my bed while I was sleeping, and fell on my dog. I spooked him. He bit me (HARD), and he gave me four very nice holes in my head. Still have the scars. I wanted to crush my dog's head with a reverse jaws of life. I have a pond in my backyard. Once, my dog fell through the ice of the frozen pond. I had to jump in and save him, and I almost got stuck myself. I wanted to choke the doggy life out of him. These are the short versions, and I've had other dogs. These, however, are the things I remember most. It's probably why I loved this dog the most. Humans love imperfection. I think pets, and dogs in particular, are the only loving relationship some people have. A robot will never be that, no matter how advanced it is. We know it's not "real". Maybe this will change somewhere down the line. But, We love things like us. Things that have a good, bad, and ugly. This study is quite flawed in my opinion. All they are seeing are the effects of novelty.

The problem with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

While I suspect this is well intentioned, it has the potential to send the message that we are attempting to abandon our own interactions with the elderly and substitute machines instead. Someday technology may blurr the line between mechanical life and biological life, but it is so far from there at this point that the use of such tools outside the laboratory comes across as looking for a way to make the elderly less of a burden. Something about that doesn't sit terribly well. I understand it can be hard interacting with folks at the end of their physical health (it's a direct confrontation of mortality) but they are still people and want to interact with the world, as much as they are able to. I think once you reach that stage of life you understand that its people that are really important, and while robot dogs might be interesting in the sense of being something new their children have come up with I doubt it will be any kind of emotional subsitute for either people or a living animal in and of itself.

Re:No comparison

[cellocgw]

No, a robot pet can never learn love, loyalty, hate or other emotions. It can at best closely mimic the behaviour caused by these emotions in real animals.
I call that irrelevant. Us pet owners anthropomorphize like crazy. Dogs wag their tails and lick our faces to show submission and we interpret it as love. Cats rub up against our legs to mark their ownership and we interpret it as affection.
And so on. Who cares? The pets are happy and well cared-for, and the owners feel great.
If a nice soft fuzzy robot can do that, who cares what's inside?
I'll avoid the analogies to rubber dolls....