From HildaRuth Beaumont, Brighton, UK
Rowan Hooper’s musings on future robot pets brought to mind two things. The first was the Furby, an electronic “pet” developed in the late 90s. It could respond to a variety of inputs with changes to its facial expression and speech. All its abilities were programmed into it and the Furby wasn’t connected to outside sources of information. This is different from Hooper’s robo-pets, which also aren’t connected to the internet but can learn different behaviours by the way their owners treat them, very much like real pets (12 October, p 22).
It is in line with author Eve Poole’s idea of developing relationships between humans and robots by considering how we might “bring up” robots in the same way as we bring up children.
