(heart) Robot

Robotics is forecast to have a profound effect on the 21st century, just as much as computers, cars, and aircraft changed human life in the 20th. Already children's toys are acquiring believable personalities, and many scientists are investigating how robots can be made more life-like so that we can deal with them as naturally as we would a human being. For the children of the near future, the emotional bonds you formed with your teachers and parents may to some extent be formed with machines. Machines that can talk to you, that remember your name, that cry when you treat them badly or purr when you stroke them.We believe the consequences of this change in human life will be profound. Will this enhance or diminish our humanity? Will we be less able to treat other human beings with respect in a world where machines seem just as alive as cats, dogs, and people? Or will living in an emotional world teach us to be more emotionally literate, and more able to form deep bonds?Clearly, these are big questions with potentially important consequences! We hope to bring these questions to the attention of the public, not in a lab or a science fair, but in street festivals, carnivals, cafes and bars. Using a lifelike puppet equipped with robotic functions, which can 'breath', can be startled and frightened by loud noise, or calmly go to sleep, we will help people to explore what it might be like to bond with a robot. By marrying robotics with the long traditions of puppetry, animation, mime and other arts we hope to give a glimpse today of the emotional machines of the future!