Diegosan the Robotic Toddler

On Tuesday, February 19, Cody L. and I presents Diegosan. Diegosan is a robotic toddler that was created to simulate they way in which children, specifically one year-old children, learn to interact with other humans through emotions. Diegosan is able to create multiple facial expressions and has 44 pneumatic joints.
I presented the con side to this technology. In order to study how one year-old children learn to interact with the world, other children will need to be involved in this study. I am concerned with this because there is an uncertainty of the psychological effects the study will have on the children. I am also very confused with how a one year-old child's learning can be simulated by this robot. If we do not know how they learn, how can we create something that learns like a child. Looking into the future, this technology could be used as a companion for only children and children with different mental syndromes like Autism or Aspergers. The psychological effect of this are unknown and have a very bad potential in my opinion. In the quotes within the prezi, Turkle shows how humans begin to bond with robots and lose a separation of interacting with humans and robots.