To Be Or Not To Be (Humanoid), Part II: Christopher Parlitz Responds

Christopher Parlitz, the project leader behind the Care-O-Bot kindly replied to our query regarding the not-so-humanoid appearance of the Care-O-Bot today.

Robots: To Be Or Not To Be (Humanoid), That Is The Question

Early last week scientists released research which found that the more human-like features a robot possesses, the more we engage cortical regions associated with mental state attribution/mentalizing in their presence.

In other words, if bots look like humans, smell like humans, and taste like humans, then we think they’re human. (Don’t eat them though, they’re bad for your teeth.) 

So, it was interesting to read the following remark from Christopher Parlitz, one of the scientists behind the Care-O-Bot 3 prototype, which was unveiled a few days ago: