Smartness of the toy robots

[zahx offline]

You know. It's very interesting what the people think about the features of the robots. So I decide to make a short interesting poll.
This poll is about features that make the toy-robot smart. About what features are more important for the definition of the smartness of toy robot.

So please try to fill out this pull. It won't take a lot of time.

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/539614

And of course it's interesting to read your thourts and discuss them!

[limor]

when i was in Uni, long time ago, there was a popular pre-internet computerized subscription match-making service/game for students that started as a physiology department experiment and within weeks had many thousands of student participating.
You filled in a poll (similar to this robot toy one) scoring the importance of over 200 things related to your dream partner/date.
For each item, you had to give your data/opinion, the data/opinion that your ideal partner should have, and how much weight to give this item in the overall matching score.
Examples of included: height, hair color, ethnicity, religion, education, music, sport, adventurousness, "love for dolphins" etc.
You would then receive once a week by mail a letter with contact details of one to five high scoring matched partners.
The matched partners conformed perfectly to the exhaustive scoring system. She/he had the perfect eye color, height, love for music and dolphins, socio-economic background and passions. However, they were usually disappointingly far off from what one expected.


The moral of the story is that a poll scoring people's ideal robot toy may not be the way to spec out the perfect product.

[i-Bot offline]

I think it is the quality of the questions, not the technique:


"love of dolphins" pah, these were students ( 70's ?).


Do you have your own room ?

Can you get both me and you there after 10 pints ( you buy your own) ?

How many watts is your stereo ?

Is there a takeaway near your place ?

Do you mind if I ..... ?

And the imperfect product was always more fun.

So I agree the poll is likely flawed, because it incorrectly already assumes too much about i-toys. Ask the wrong questions and get the wrong answers. A future i-toy is likely as much a social tool as simply a technical capability
Maybe questions should be added like:

Can it be my pal ?

Will my mates consider it awesome ?

Can it inflict hideous damage to other robots ?

Should my robot be less smart or more smart than me ?

Should a robot have physical human attributes ?

Does it have its own room ? OOPs here we go again !