Free Republic

The timing was perfect. My wife and I had been debating about whether to adopt a cat. There wasn't complete agreement. Or any, really. Suddenly, I received an email whose subject line was so promising: "A lifelike robot cat powered by AI, because why not?" Why not, indeed? Everything will soon be robotic, to one extent or another. Even our very selves. Why not see what it's like to live with a being that is, according to its makers, "a lifelike pet designed to offset loneliness for the elderly and provide companionship for couples, children, and families." Elephant Robotics insists...

Malle said they don't want to make overblown promises of what the cat can do, something he and his fellow researcher -computer science professor Michael Littman -said they've seen in other robots on the market. They hope to make a cat that would perform a small set of tasks very well. They also want to keep it affordable, just a few hundred dollars. The current version costs $100. They've given the project a name that gets at that idea: Affordable Robotic Intelligence for Elderly Support, or ARIES. The team includes researchers from Brown's medical school, area hospitals and a designer...