Dogs Are Perfectly Happy To Socialize With Robots
A Robot's Best Friend Eniko Kubinyi Dogs will interact with social machines. But will dogs assist the robots in taking over the world? In the centuries-old best friendship between dogkind and humankind, humans are apparently easily replaced with robots. Seemingly loyal canines are totally willing to interact with cold, hard machines, according to a new study in Animal Cognition, gazing lovingly at their robot faces and finding hidden foodstuffs that the robot pointed to. Robots, stop taking things away from us! The study investigated whether or not dogs would be willing to interact with an unfamiliar robot. It found that the dogs would interact with a cyborg--if the robot seemed like a social being, as evidence by its ability to talk to the dog and its owner. The PeopleBot telepresence robot used in the study looks a lot like "piece of gym equipment with a white gloved hand attached to it,"...