Dogs Love Robots, Prefer Humans 45
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Researchers recently spent some time forcing dogs and robots to hang out together, in order to better understand the social qualities of interactive robots. The scientists had two objectives: to find out whether canines would interact with a robot and also to see whether they would ascribe social qualities to a non-living, non-human-like being. Dogs were divided into two groups: one would have a social interaction with the robot while the other would have an asocial interaction. They were allowed to watch their owners interact with the robot before meeting it themselves, which was then followed by a session wherein the canine subjects had to obey gestural cues from either a robot or a human. The robot purposely did not look human, save for its arms and gloved hand, as the researchers wanted to explore sociality apart from anthropoid features. As it turns out, dogs were interested in the robots, especially if the robots themselves were social and they saw owners interact with the robot, but ultimately were not as responsive or successful in following cues as they would otherwise be with humans."
Smell (Score:5, Interesting)
The robot purposely did not look human,
But don't dogs have a keen sense of smell? Presumably they could smell the difference between a person and a robot - and act accordingly. So there were two variables that should have been tested, not just what the robot looked like.
Clfford Simak's City (Score:4, Interesting)
Simak dealt with robot-dog relations long, long ago in his wonderful collection of stories (mostly on a post-human Earth).