Take a good look at that little yellow thing at right. Do you trust it? Here’s a better question: if you were eight, and it was reading you a story, would you fall asleep, or stay awake out of fear it was trying to lull your squishy human brain to sleep in order to exterminate you?
We ask because researchers exposing this thing to children and found, big surprise, that the robot was capable of detecting when they started falling asleep and thus got their attention by raising its voice or making arm gestures.
Apparently this “increased engagement”, if you define “watching this thing carefully to make sure it isn’t going to murder me” as “engagement.” The kids did get more questions correctly, but that might be because they were afraid the robot might come for them if they didn’t.
No word on how many sets of pants had to be changed.
image courtesy Mitsubishi