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Advances in robotics have been applied to automation in industrial manufacturing, with the primary purpose of optimizing practical systems in terms of such objective measures as accuracy, speed, and cost. The paper introduces research on artificial emotional creatures that seeks to explore a different direction that is not so rigidly dependent on such objective measures. The goal of this research is to explore a new area in robotics, with an emphasis on human-robot interaction. There is a large body of evidence that shows the importance of the interaction between humans and animals such as pets. We have been building pet robots, as artificial emotional creatures, with the subjective appearance of behaviors that are dependent on internal states as well as external stimuli from both the physical environment and human beings. The pet robots have multi-modal sensory system, actuators, and bodies with artificial skin for physical interaction with human beings.
Shibata et al. (Mon,) studied this question.