BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What happened to the Robot Age?

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What happened to the Robot Age?: "Feigning sensitivity
So while the world gasped at the sight of a robot defeating a chess Grandmaster, no one had thought to equip these mobile lumps of metal with the fundamental social skills that humans take for granted in each other.

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These days, the watchword in robotics is 'multi-disciplinary' - bringing together people from sociology and psychology backgrounds, as well as the technical folk, to build a robot that could be a true domestic goddess.
Hence the research team decamping from the laboratory to a humble flat, where it has let its robots loose on 700 volunteer subjects.
The team has been studying issues such as personal space, how people expect a robot to approach them, or even get their attention.
'What's the best way for a robot to interrupt you if you are reading a newspaper - by gesturing with its arms, blinking its lights or making a sound,' says Prof Dautenhahn.
'We've this notion of the personalised robot companion and we are seriously looking into people's likes and dislikes and how they can be useful to people.'
Prof Chris Melhuish, who is overseeing similar works at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, agrees.
'The dynamics of interactions are incredibly important. It doesn't have feelings of course, but must have the techniques and wherewithal to appear to have feelings "