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*Robohug!*
UMass engineers have built a vest that hugs you through air pressure. It's for people with anxiety issues who like the physical pressure of hugs. They're going to use it to do a scientific study on whether it actually works. Okay, so maybe it's not quite a robot, but it's still an artificial hugging device.
People always make jokes about robot love, but what about robot friendship? This is one small step toward a robot friend! Now they just need to hook it up to a speech synthesizer that says, "There there..."
Update: For your comfort, here are speech synthesizer versions of "There There" in MP3 format. Your robotic friends, always ready to be there for you, are: Vicki, Bruce, and Zarvox.
Comments (3)
If I won't let humans hug me, why, oh why, would I let a machine hug me? One software malfunction, and it's the squeeze of death!
Posted on Oct-13-2006 | Link
Well, that depends greatly on the reason why you won't let humans hug you (which I don't know), but some possible reasons would not apply to robots.
Posted on Oct-13-2006 | Link
To some extent this is old news. Read the wikipedia article about Temple Grandin's hug machine.
Posted on Oct-15-2006 | Link