Child care by robots? Is this science fiction, or the fantasy of an exhausted parent? No, it is a topic of serious discussion by computer scientists and robotics experts, although not all of them approve of the idea.
Noel Sharkey of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom published an article entitled "The Ethical Frontiers of Robotics" in the journal Science (19 December, 2009, vol. 322, pp. 1800-1801). Dr. Sharkey discussed the work of Japanese and South Korean companies in developing "child-minding robots" or "nanny-bots" that can recognize speech and faces, play quiz games, and provide video games to play. As the title of his article indicates, Dr. Sharkey was and is concerned about the impact of robot care on children. He noted the possibility that with a "nanny-bot" in charge, "children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown" (p. 1800).
Certainly, before parents rush to order a nanny-bot, we need to consider what the effect on a child's development might be. We also need to consider what circumstances we are talking about. The first and essential question-the most important question in any discussion about child development-is how old the child is. The effect of any mode of care on a young infant will be vastly different than the effect on a teenager, and even younger and older infants may react quite differently to similar experiences. A second question is, how much time will be spent with the robot caregiver? Are we talking about an hour while Mom lies down to get rid of a headache, or about the "several days" suggested by Noel Sharkey? Finally, what will be the child's experiences with human beings, when the nanny-bot is put on its recharging station for a while? Will the human caregivers be engaged, sensitive, and responsive, or will they be uninterested in the child and look forward to the return of robot time? Different answers to these three questions are likely to predict different outcomes of robot care.
Let's consider the care of infants and toddlers, however. Children of these ages are challenging, and their care is labor-intensive, so this would be the developmental period when parents might most like robot help. But what are the experiences such young children need from their caregivers? And, can robots provide anything like them?
Noel Sharkey's concerns about "human contact" and "social isolation" are in line with what we know about infant and toddler development. Experiences with touch, movement, voice sounds, and chances to see faces and their changing expressions-- these seem to be essential contributors to emotional and mental development. Without these, development of language use and understanding will be impaired, and the social relationships usually called "attachment" may be distorted.
Although human beings have different ways of caring for their young children, depending on their cultural background, one thing they have in common is that much of the social interaction between adults and children is embedded in care routines rather than a separate activity. Caregivers don't feed and clean up the baby, then settle down to play, but instead their playful social communication takes place as part of feeding, cleaning, or dressing. One of the reasons this works well is that babies are alert and ready to interact at such times. The babies behave in ways that stimulate adults to socialize with them.
Even if we could imagine a robot that could feed, clean, or dress a baby-which is pretty difficult-- it is hard to envision one that could respond as a human caregiver does to the baby's changing moods and communicative cues. There would be enormous difficulty in creating a robot face capable of responding with smiles, frowns, and "eye" movement to the baby's changing looks, or of modifying its voice to be higher or lower pitched, or more or less intoned, in order to reflect the baby's mood. These are the types of responses that adult caregivers provide for babies, and that guide development of the baby's skill at communicating by look, or gesture, and later by speech.
It seems unlikely that many hours, or days, in robot care would support good infant development. However, this does not necessarily mean that there is no use whatever for nanny-bots in child care. After all, baby-sitters do not necessarily do a parent's job, either.
