University of Melbourne animal welfare researcher Jean-Loup Rault, PhD says pets will soon become a luxury in an overpopulated, high-density world and the future may lie in robot pets that mimic the real thing.
“It might sound surreal for us to have robotic or virtual pets, but it could be totally normal for the next generation,” Rault said. “If 10 billion human beings live on the planet in 2050 as predicted, it’s likely to occur sooner than we think. We are already seeing people form strong emotional bonds with robot dogs in Japan.
“Pet robotics has come a long way from the Tamagotchi craze of the mid-1990s. In Japan, people are becoming so attached to their robot dogs that they hold funerals for them when the circuits die.
“You won’t find a lot of research on pet robotics out there, but if you Google robot dogs, there are countless patents. Everyone wants to get ahead of this thing because there is a market and it will take off in the next 10 to 15 years.”
“Robots can, without a doubt, trigger human emotions,” Rault added. “If artificial pets can produce the same benefits we get from live pets, does that mean that our emotional bond with animals is really just an image that we project on to our pets?
“Of course we care about live animals, but if we become used to a robotic companion that doesn’t need food, water or exercise, perhaps it will change how humans care about other living beings.”
Rault says robot pets of the future could learn to think and respond on their own.
“When engineers work on robotic dogs, they work on social intelligence, they address what people need from their dogs: companionship, love, obedience, dependence,” he said.
“They want to know everything about animal behavior so they can replicate it as close as possible to a real pet.”
And what about robotic cats? “Well, that’s a little harder because you have to make them unpredictable,” he concluded. His open access paper is in the latest edition of Frontiers in Veterinary Science
Japanese Robot Dogs
LT Times 14 May 2015
So adored is a certain breed of robotic dog in Japan that distraught owners arrange funerals when their electronics expire (James Dean writes).
A veterinary scientist says that we shouldn’t laugh, because robo-pets will replace the real thing in as little as a decade. Huge numbers of patents are being filed by the companies behind them, according to Jean-Loup Rault, an animal welfare researcher at the University of Melbourne, who predicts that the market will take off because we have become more willing to embrace technology in our social lives.
“A legitimate but tacit question is whether this technological evolution will also change human– animal relationships [and] the place of pets in human societies,” he writes in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science. Pet ownership as we know it is unsustainable, he argues, as the global population becomes more urbanised.
Nicky Trevorrow at the welfare charity Cats Protection, said that a world in which humans shared their homes with robotic pets would be quite depressing. She added: “Programmed affection is no substitute for the real two-way bond between a pet and its owner. It’s sad to think a lump of metal could take the place of a sentient being with a unique personality.”
It is nearly 20 years since Tamagotchi, the handheld virtual pet, first swept playgrounds across the world. Comprising an LCD screen and a few buttons, it was an instant hit, although Aibo, released by Sony in 1999, is the most successful robotic dog ever made: about 150,000 were sold, mainly in Japan, until Sony stopped making them in 2006.
An Aibo dog can see, hear and understand commands from its owner, learn from them and form its own personality. It can also ignore commands on occasion, much like a real dog.
Thousands of Aibo dogs live on, but, unfortunately for their owners, Sony stopped repairing them last year. As such, the breed is dying out. Some owners have turned to specialist repair companies; failing that, many have been given funerals.
“It might sound surreal for us to have robotic or virtual pets, but it could be totally normal for the next generation,” said Dr Rault. “We are already seeing people form strong emotional bonds with robot dogs in Japan. If artificial pets can produce the same benefits we get from live pets, does that mean that our emotional bond with animals is really just an image we project on to our pets?
“When engineers work on robotic dogs, they work on social intelligence. They address what people need from their dogs: companionship, love, obedience, dependence.”
Virtual Pets
Scientific American 18 May 2015
The advent of smartphones, social media and other technologies have altered the way people interact with each other. Just watch a group of people out for a meal together, all on their phones texting people who aren’t there.
Technology may also be poised to change the way we relate to animals—by removing the living, breathing ones from our homes. The main threat to pets is not social media, per se, but rather robots and virtual FarmVille-like animals.
These inanimate objects of our affection are certainly easier to care for than are the real ones. And they still might someday meet their owners’ needs for companionship, love, obedience and dependence. That’s according to University of Melbourne animal behavior researcher Jean-Loup Rault, writing in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science. [Jean-Loup Rault, Pets in the digital age: live, robot, or virtual?]
The infiltration of fake pets is already happening to a small degree. In Japan, some owners of Sony’s AIBO robotic dog even hold funerals when these devices are beyond repair.
Our concept of a pet gets shaped at an early age. Previous generations born and bred with dogs and cats might dismiss robopets as mere toys. But children of the digital age, raised on touchscreens and online games, might see things differently. One can imagine a future fake-dog owner breathlessly asking his vet technician: is Fido dead, or is it just his battery?