Charlie is a cartoon likeness of a human. A view widely held by researchers, and much of the public, is that robots should look either convincingly human or obviously not human. The more a machine looks like us the more we’ll relate to it—though only up to a point. A very close but imperfect similarity tends to be unsettling or even downright disturbing. Robotics professionals refer to what they call the ‘uncanny valley’; in short, if you can’t achieve total perfection in a robot’s human-like appearance, back off. Leave it looking robot-like. This is rather convenient—a version of Charlie indistinguishable from you and me could price itself out of the market. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t simulate our actions, however. A robot that doesn’t move its hands, for example, looks unnatural. “If you look at people when they’re talking, they don’t stay still,” says Belpaeme, pointing at Charlie and a child engrossed in conversation. “Besides their lips and tongues, their hands are moving.”

The angst we generate over adults forming relationships with robots seems not to be applied to children. Consider the role of dolls, imaginary friends, and such like in normal childhood development. To start worrying about kids enjoying friendships with robots seems, to me, perverse. Why then am I so anxious about it in adult life?

“I don’t see why having a relationship with a robot would be impossible,” says Belpaeme. “There’s nothing I can see to preclude that from happening.” The machine would need to be well-informed about the details of your life, interests, and activities, and it would have to show an explicit interest in you as against other people. Current robots are nowhere near this, he says, but he can envisage a time when they might be.

Dautenhahn hopes that robots never become a substitute for humans. “I am completely against it,” she says, but concedes that if that’s the way technology progresses, there will be little that she or her successors can do about it. “We are not the people who will produce or market these systems.” Belpaeme’s ethical sticking point—and others usually say something similar—would be the stage at which robot contact becomes preferred to human contact. But in truth, that’s not a very high bar. Many children already trade many hours of playing with their peers for an equivalent number online with their computers.

In the end, of course, the question becomes not ‘Do I want a robot companion to care for me?’ but ‘Would I accept being cared for by a robot?’ If the time comes when I am still compos mentis but physically infirm, would I be prepared for the one-armed Care-O-bot to take me to the toilet, or PARO to be my couch companion during movies?

There are cultural considerations here. The Japanese, for example, treat robots matter-of-factly and appear more at ease with them. There are two theories about this, according to Belpaeme. One attributes it to the Shinto religion, and the belief that inanimate objects have a spirit. He himself favors a more mundane explanation: popular culture. There are lots of films and TV series in Japan that feature benevolent robots that come to your rescue. When we in the West see robots on television they are more likely to be malevolent. Either way, though, I’m not Japanese.