Kubinyi Eniko, Miklósi Adám, Kaplan Frédéric, Gácsi Márta, Topál József, Csányi Vilmos
Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány sétány 1/C, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary.
Behav Processes. 2004 Mar 31;65(3):231-9. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2003.10.003.
The use of animal-like autonomous robots might offer new possibilities in the study of animal interactions, if the subject recognises it as a social partner. In this paper we investigate whether AIBO, a dog-like robot of the Sony Corp. can be used for this purpose. Twenty-four adult and sixteen 4-5 months old pet dogs were tested in two situations where subjects encountered one of four different test-partners: (1) a remote controlled car; (2) an AIBO robot; (3) AIBO with a puppy-scented furry cover; and (4) a 2-month-old puppy. In the neutral situation the dog could interact freely with one of the partners for 1 min in a closed arena in the presence of its owner. In the feeding situation the encounters were started while the dog was eating food. Our results show that age and context influence the social behaviour of dogs. Further, we have found that although both age groups differentiated the living and non-living test-partners for some extent, the furry AIBO evoked significantly increased responses in comparison to the car. These experiments show the first steps towards the application of robots in behavioural studies, notwithstanding that at present AIBO's limited ability to move constrains its effectiveness as social partner for dogs.
如果动物能将类似动物的自主机器人识别为社交伙伴，那么这类机器人可能会为动物互动研究带来新的可能性。在本文中，我们研究了索尼公司的狗形机器人爱宝是否可用于此目的。24只成年宠物狗和16只4至5个月大的宠物狗在两种情境下接受了测试，测试对象会遇到四种不同测试伙伴中的一种：（1）遥控汽车；（2）爱宝机器人；（3）带有幼犬气味毛绒外皮的爱宝；（4）一只2个月大的幼犬。在中性情境中，狗可以在其主人在场的封闭场地内与其中一个伙伴自由互动1分钟。在喂食情境中，互动在狗进食时开始。我们的结果表明，年龄和情境会影响狗的社交行为。此外，我们发现，尽管两个年龄组在一定程度上都能区分有生命和无生命的测试伙伴，但与汽车相比，毛茸茸的爱宝引发的反应明显增加。这些实验展示了机器人在行为研究中应用的初步进展，尽管目前爱宝有限的移动能力限制了它作为狗的社交伙伴的有效性。
