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Phoenix666 writes:

Now, a new study by a team of Japanese researchers shows that, in certain situations, children are actually horrible little brats and may not be as empathetic towards robots as we'd previously thought, with gangs of unsupervised tykes repeatedly punching, kicking, and shaking a robot in a Japanese mall.

The researchers—from ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, Osaka University, Ryukoku University, and Tokai University, in Japan—patrolled a public shopping complex in Osaka with a remotely operated Robovie 2 (a robot that is, incidentally, no stranger to abuse). Whenever somebody obstructed the robot's path, it would politely ask the human to step aside. If the human didn't listen, the robot moved in the opposite direction. Over the course of the study, researchers found that children were sometimes all too eager to give the robot a hard time. Particularly when in packs and unsupervised, the youngsters would intentionally block Robovie's way.
...
In a second paper [PDF], "Why Do Children Abuse Robots?," based on the same Japanese mall experiment, the researchers interviewed the abusive children about their behavior. When questioned, 74 percent of the kids described the robot as "human-like" and only 13 percent as "machine-like." Half of them said that they believed that their behavior was "stressful or painful" for the robot.

So basically, most of these kids perceive the robot they're abusing as lifelike, and then just go ahead and abuse it anyway. While that's a little disturbing, it appears to be in line with some child psychology research on animal abuse. Empathy for other entities may be something we learn as we age. And as for grown ups? It looks like adults are reluctant to abuse robots that respond in a lifelike way, and empathic adults even more so.

The article describes strategies the researchers developed to help the robot escape. Wonder if they figured out a way for it to escape what packs of Japanese kids love the best, kancho?

Original Submission