Judging a robot by it’s cover

Robopanda, by WoWWEe Robotics

 

From a recent Wall Street Journal article:

“There is another problem for these robots: Many of them are, in fact, scary. They look like big metallic spiders, faceless Storm Troopers, and soulless assassins from a dystopian future.

To address such concerns, developers at the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Lab in California have tried to create a “panda-police look,” said Brett Kennedy, the team leader. At the moment, RoboSimian, the lab’s entry in the contest, looks more like a black-legged spider than a cuddly mammal. “We don’t want it to be too scary, and we also want it to be a piece of equipment that someone’s going to want to pick up and use,” he said.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304773104579270681906745124

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Of course, the least scary appearance would probably be the look of a human being. Or, would people object to that as a robot impersonating a human?