{"id":140,"date":"2015-05-21T03:28:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T03:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=252738"},"modified":"2015-05-21T20:38:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T20:38:03","slug":"will-robot-pets-replace-the-real-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2015\/05\/21\/will-robot-pets-replace-the-real-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Will robot pets replace the real thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sony’s Aibo pet robot dogs. — credit | Sony<\/p><\/div>\n

University of Melbourne<\/a> animal welfare researcher Jean-Loup Rault, PhD<\/a> says pets will soon become a luxury in an overpopulated,\u00a0high-density world and the future may lie in robot pets that mimic the real thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might sound surreal for us to have robotic or virtual pets, but it could be totally normal for the next generation,\u201d Rault said. \u201cIf 10 billion human beings live on the planet in 2050 as predicted, it\u2019s likely to occur sooner than we think. We are already seeing people form strong emotional bonds with robot dogs in Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cPet robotics has come a long way from the Tamagotchi<\/a> craze of the mid-1990s. In Japan, people are becoming so attached to their robot dogs that they hold funerals for them when the circuits die.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t find a lot of research on pet robotics out there, but if you Google robot dogs, there are countless patents. Everyone wants to get ahead of this thing because there is a market and it will take off in the next 10 to 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRobots can, without a doubt, trigger human emotions,\u201d Rault added. \u201cIf artificial pets can produce the same benefits we get from live pets, does that mean that our emotional bond with animals is really just an image that we project on to our pets?<\/p>\n

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Sony’s Aibo pet robot dogs. — credit | Sony<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOf course we care about live animals, but if we become used to a robotic companion that doesn\u2019t need food, water or exercise, perhaps it will change how humans care about other living beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rault says robot pets of the future could learn to think and respond on their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen engineers work on robotic dogs, they work on social intelligence, they address what people need from their dogs: companionship, love, obedience, dependence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to know everything about animal behavior so they can replicate it as close as possible to a real pet.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what about robotic cats? \u201cWell, that\u2019s a little harder because you have to make them unpredictable,\u201d he concluded. His open access paper<\/a> is in the latest edition of\u00a0Frontiers in Veterinary Science<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"related reading:<\/strong>
\nSony | Aibo<\/a>
\nParo Robots | Paro<\/a>
\nBandai | Tamagochi Friends<\/a><\/p>\n

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