Children Beating Up Robot Inspires New Escape Maneuver System - IEEE Spectrum
▻http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/children-beating-up-robot
A few years ago, the curious folks at the Radiolab show/podcast asked some kids to hold a Barbie doll, a live hamster, and a Furby robot upside down. Not surprisingly, the children were unfazed by the Barbie, holding it on its head for a long time. When it was the hamster’s turn, the kids were quick to release the squirming animal, for fear that they were hurting it (no surprise here either). The interesting part came when they held the Furby. The children said that, even though they knew it was just a toy, they worried that they were “hurting” the robot (which loudly protested being upside down), suggesting that they felt some empathy for the furry machine.
Now, a new study by a team of Japanese researchers shows that, in certain situations, children are actually horrible little brats may not be as empathetic towards robots as we’d previously thought, with gangs of unsupervised tykes repeatedly punching, kicking, and shaking a robot in a Japanese mall.