Too busy to vacuum your living room? Let Roomba the robot do
it. Don’t want to risk a soldier’s life to disable an explosive? Let a robot do
it.
It’s becoming more common to have robots sub in for humans
to do dirty or sometimes dangerous work. But researchers are finding that in
some cases, people have started to treat robots like pets, friends, or even as
an extension of themselves. That raises the question, if a soldier attaches
human or animal-like characteristics to a field robot, can it affect how they
use the robot? What if they “care” too much about the robot to send it into a
dangerous situation?