Robots are funky, but they tend to lose our interest pretty quickly. But make one sophisticated enough and toddlers are entertained for months – they even bond with it and treat it like a peer.
So found Javier Movellan and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego. They put a humanoid robot called QRIO (pronounced “curio”), developed by Sony, into a classroom of 18 to 24-month-old toddlers. The 60-centimetre-tall robot walks around, waves and giggles when patted on the head. Sensors help him to avoid bumping into people or walls. “We expected that after a few hours the magic was…
