Roombas are basically extremely smart vacuum cleaners, but to some owners they start to feel like pets or friends–a phenomenon investigated by one of my favorite accounts on Twitter, @SelfAwareROOMBA , where you can follow the philosophical, dramatic, and mundane musings of the eponymous device.

As more advanced robots enter more parts of our lives, especially in the workplace, there could be growing emotional and psychological consequences for their human caretakers.

We may be uncomfortable with the ill-treatment of robots well short of any claims of consciousness.

Julie Carpenter, a human-robot interaction researcher who did her doctoral work at the University of Washington’s School of Education, recently found that out in a series of interviews she did with 23 military personnel who operate robots that dismantle explosives and other weapons. In their responses, it was clear they had begun to view the robots as extension of themselves.

“There’s generally one person who is tasked with operating the robot regularly,” Carpenter says. “They described the robot in terms of their sense of self, not just as an avatar of themselves at a destination. They would often describe it as: ‘the robot is really my hands.’”

While the military robot operators knew in their heads their robots were simply tools designed to keep them safe, they gave their robot names and even painted the names on the side. They also experienced a sense of loss–even a few had funerals–when their robot got “hurt” or destroyed in the course of an operation, Carpenter says.

Ryan Calo, a researcher who studies the legal issues around robotic technologies at the University of Washington School of Law, sees broader repercussions of our emotional attachments as technology advances. A robot might not need to be self-aware to have rights to certain legal protections some day.

“Because of our conflation of what appears to be social and what is actual,” says Calo, “we may be uncomfortable with the ill-treatment of robots well short of any claims of consciousness.” Speaking at a conference about drones and aerial robotics at NYU recently, he said there may be a new philosophical, or “ontological,” category that is needed to describe the interaction.