In 2013, the Kirobo robot was sent to the ISS to keep Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata company. They were able to communicate together and this made Wakata feel less lonely. Three years later, Toyota comes with a smaller version of Kirobo: Mini-Kirobo. This version is not built for astronauts but for earthlings. The primary goal of Kirobo is to assist people while travelling by car. Toyota states that people on average spend 4.3 years of their lives in a car and that Kirobo can help us to understand the behavior and emotions we express while driving.
How does that work?
Kirobo has the ability to react to people’s emotions. This means he is able to register what emotion someone is expressing at a certain moment. Al the data Kirobo gathers will then be combined in order to give people a better understanding of what people feel while driving. This way Toyota is able to better lives of drivers all over the planet.
But accompanying drivers all over the word is not the only goal of mini Kirobo. Toyota believes that Kirobo will be able to make lonely people outside a car feel less lonely as well. A robot that is able to adjust his way of communicating to people’s emotions could indeed be a powerful tool to help people who experience difficulties in making contact with other people. On the other hand, after buying Kirobo, what incentives will those people have to try communicating with other human beings? If a child would grow up with a robot like Kirobo, who will always be able to say the perfect things because he is able to notice emotions and adjust his way of communicating to those emotions, will that child still understand that people not always tend to do that? Or will it make communicating with other people more difficult in the future?
Just a harmless companion or a threat on the long-term?
Right now it is presented as nothing more than a $400 companion for drivers which could be of help to lonely people as well. Is Kirobo indeed as harmless as this sounds? Or do we have to fear that the artificial intelligence behind it will create only more lonely people on the long-term?
Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/toyota-kirobo-mini-robot-baby-artificial-intelligence-ai-lonely-happy-release-date-a7342596.html
https://www.bright.nl/nieuws/mini-robot-van-toyota-houdt-japanners-volgend-jaar-gezelschap
https://www.toyota-europe.com/world-of-toyota/articles-news-events/introducing-kirobo-mini
