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I was reading something the other day talking about some the issues folks have with cgi. It seems that when the cgi is somewhat lifelike, people will feel sympathy for the characters, however as it gets really close to being real , but not quite there we actually have the opposite reactions. One thing that is still not quite there with computer animation are faces. Faces are the first thing we learn to recognise as infants, and if it is just slightly off, people will reject the simulation. Same goes for body movements. I'm sure you have notices how even in really good cgi, movement doesnt look natural. It tends to be too smooth , and so is not quite like normal human motion. I think in this case, because the robot was human-like, but obviously robotic, it evoked that sympathy response. The psychology of this stuff is actually fairly interesting IMO.

Actually now they are really coming up with life like computer animated faces, like this one which I saw last year which blew my mind........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts

This womans face is computer generated as well..........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgLFt5wfP4

I think where they are now is that they *can* make life like faces but the work it requires is too much where it can be used in movies and video games but I assume with every passing year they are learning to do it faster. I really think in 20 years, like that other Freeper was saying, we will be at a point where we will be talking to people, at least on video, not realizing they are computer generated. I’m not sure if realistic artificial persons will be around by then but it wouldn’t surprise me. To me it seems the whole issue comes down to shrinking components once again. For a full sized artificial person you would need a fairly large battery and motor systems which is why I assume that robot Boston dynamics made has a large backpack. The inside of a human body is very very small so if they were going to make a realistic artificial person, they would not have much room to work with, probably something no bigger than a desk drawer.