New science: Pathetic humans can't bring themselves to fire lovable klutz-bots

[steve2470]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/20/softhearted_humans_cant_help_but_love_klutzbots/

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A university study has found that adding basic facial expressions to a robot can be enough to forge an emotional bond with humans.

Researchers with University College London and University of Bristol in the UK found that when humans were paired with a robot that displayed facial expressions of remorse, the fleshy overlord was both more patient and forgiving, and in some cases even showed concern for the feelings of the robot.

The study (PDF) partnered the human subjects with a trio of robots, two of which were non-communicative and one that could talk and pull facial expressions.

The human-robot pair was then given a series of basic kitchen tasks in which the robot acted as the "assistant" to the human. The droids were also set up with varying levels of efficiency: the talking robot was programmed to make mistakes such as dropping eggs.

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