Does your robot have a Halloween costume?

Posted by ljmacphee on October 31, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, robotics |

A newly released Georgia Tech study shows that some Roomba owners become deeply attached to the robotic vacuums and suggests there’s a measure of public readiness to accept additional robots in the house - even flawed ones.”They’re more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it,” said Beki Grinter, an associate professor at the school’s College of Computing. “It sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn’t have to be as reliable.”Grinter decided to study the devices after she saw online pictures of people dressing up their Roombas, disc-shaped, self-directed vacuums made by iRobot Corp.”This sort of notion that someone would dress a vacuum cleaner seemed strange,” she said. “A lot more was going on.” . . . [ read more Study finds human-robot attachment]

I admit it, I cried when Scooba died last week. But that was because it had been two years since I mopped a floor and didn’t want to have to start again. My new industrial version of Scooba should be here late this week.

See also:
Development and Application of Heuristic Evaluation to Human-Robot Interaction ( DOC )