Robohub.org
 

Alone together with man’s new best friend | NPR Technology Podcast


by
21 March 2013



share this:
iTunes icon for NPR Technology Podcast

In the latest (March 20th) episode of NPR’s Technology Podcast, the first two segments are devoted to addressing the questions “Are We Plugged-In, Connected, But Alone?” and “Will Man’s Best Friend Be A Robot?”

For the first of these questions, an interview with MIT Professor Sherry Turkle is woven together with snippets from her Feb 2012 TED Talk, “Connected, but alone?” Prof. Turkle tells the story of watching an elderly woman interacting with a Paro Therapeutic Robot and how profoundly that experience affected her.

In the second segment, an interview with MIT Professor Cynthia Breazeal is interwoven with her own Dec 2010 TED Talk (TEDWomen), “The rise of personal robots”, in which she describes her work developing robots that interact with people using non-verbal cues.



tags: ,


John Payne





Related posts :



Robot Talk Episode 133 – Creating sociable robot collaborators, with Heather Knight

  14 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Heather Knight from Oregon State University about applying methods from the performing arts to robotics.

CoRL2025 – RobustDexGrasp: dexterous robot hand grasping of nearly any object

  11 Nov 2025
A new reinforcement learning framework enables dexterous robot hands to grasp diverse objects with human-like robustness and adaptability—using only a single camera.

Robot Talk Episode 132 – Collaborating with industrial robots, with Anthony Jules

  07 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Anthony Jules from Robust.AI about their autonomous warehouse robots that work alongside humans.

Teaching robots to map large environments

  05 Nov 2025
A new approach could help a search-and-rescue robot navigate an unpredictable environment by rapidly generating an accurate map of its surroundings.

Robot Talk Episode 131 – Empowering game-changing robotics research, with Edith-Clare Hall

  31 Oct 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Edith-Clare Hall from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency about accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs.

A flexible lens controlled by light-activated artificial muscles promises to let soft machines see

  30 Oct 2025
Researchers have designed an adaptive lens made of soft, light-responsive, tissue-like materials.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence