Paro has been in development by AIST since 1993. It is recognized as “the world’s most theraputic robot” by the Guiness Book of World Records. It features learning functions, can remember names, will learn actions by being petted, and will do these actions frequently. (from Tech Japan)
Elderly subjects with cognition disorders were asked to interact with Paro. The subjects’ brain waves were measured before and after the interaction for analysis. Out of the 14 people who participated in the study, 7 (50%) experienced an improvement in brain function. Studies in the past have shown that robot therapy involving Paro in domestic and international facilities for the elderly produces expressions and behavior in the patients that is similar to those in healthy people. Interaction with Paro improves brain function in elderly patients with cognition disorders and helps prevent the development of such disorders in healthy people. Furthermore, subjects who expressed a positive attitude towards Paro were found to show a greater response to the therapy.
Here is Paro working the crowd (links directly to downloadable wmv):
This thing is around 5 ft tall, 500 lbs, and was built to work alongside humans in manufacturing settings on the following stuff:
-Assembly in the manufacturing industry (bolt tightening, parts assembly/insertion and transportation) -Transportation in physical distribution processes (interprocess/in-process transportation of various members, arrangement before process)
Maybe after many years of doing what he was built for, he’ll finally discover what he’s meant for and make this girl.
Here’s an excerpt from an Scientific American interview with Levy:
And, as you mention in Love and Sex with Robots, brothels in Japan and South Korea already offer sex with dolls for the same rates they would charge for human prostitutes. So in studying sex with prostitutes, you figured you might begin to understand what the thinking behind sex with robots would be. I started analyzing the psychology of clients of prostitutes. One of the most common reasons people pay for sex was that people wanted variety in sex partners. And with robots, you could have a blonde robot today or a brunette or a redhead. Or people want different sexual experiences. Or they don’t want to commit to a relationship, but just to have a sexual relationship bound in time. All those reasons that people want to have sex with prostitutes could also apply to sex with robots.
But sex with robots won’t just be a guy thing? When I started, the research was almost entirely on male clients, but the number of women who pay for sex is on the increase, although there’s not much published on the subject. That shows both sexes are interested and willing and desirous to get sex they paid for. Heidi Fleiss is proposing to open a brothel in Nevada where all the sex workers are male and the clients are female. You already have something similar in Spain.
If people fall in love with robots, aren’t they just falling in love with an algorithm? It’s not that people will fall in love with an algorithm, but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people.
When I was 10, I was in Madame Tussauds waxworks in London with my aunt. I wanted to find someone to get to some part of the exhibition and I saw someone, and it didn’t dawn on me for a few seconds that that person was a waxwork. It had a profound effect on me—that not everything is as it seems, and that simulations can be very convincing. And that was just a simple waxwork.
And if you or others could be taken in just by a wax figure, even for a moment, imagine what a realistic robotic simulation of a person would do. But if people are aware that a robot’s just electronics, won’t that be an obstacle to true love? By 40 or 50 years, everyone of a marriageable age will have grown up with electronics all around them at home, and not see them as abnormal. People who grow up with all sorts of electronic gizmos will find android robots to be fairly normal as friends, partners, lovers.
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This dude is pretty creepy but I think he might be right. Dudes in Japan are already spending fortune on girlfriend dolls. It won’t be long before the dolls are talking and doing other stuff.
If you haven’t seen Lars and the Real Girl, it gets into some of these issues of intimacy and is a movie I’d highly recommend.
