Please, entertain!

When browsing your blogs, two standed out to me: the cooking robot and the friend robot. They both have differences in concept, as well as similarities. One could easily classify these as robots with vastly different purposes and/or concepts; for example, the cooking robot might be classified as a tool for automation, for delegating human tasks, in this case the task of cooking, which would bring it to the level of a dishwasher. The friend robots could be classified as social robots, which are meant to entertain people and to keep them company. However, one can alsoo draw a line between both: the desire to entertain. This desire to entertain others is prevalent in most humans. Wanting to be liked, wanting to be found funny, being able to entertain a group, being able to have conversations, etc. Liking to cook and serving people your favorite dishes is also something people can enjoy (myself included).

Of course, one could argue that a lot of robots are created to entertain us, even if this is not necessarily explicit. Even the "Can't help myself" robot, grim in its nature, was made to evoke an emotion in people; and therefore, could be argued to be made for entertainment. Also the robot that turns itself off described in the Todestriebe post, can definitely be seen as funny in our humnan eyes, even it is argued that it is a robot that strives for its own death.

There are, however, also robots that have been explicitly made for entertainment purposes. Some of these examples include Shimon the musical robot, or those animal-like robots. I'd like to present another one of such robots is the Automabot, the Cardboard Magician, which is explicitly made to be funny, with its simple, goofy expression but still impressive magic tricks. A demonstration can be seen in the following video.

Now, for a concept of a robot. You can go two ways, of course. The most impressive but equally most hard implementation would involve a robot that would be able to entertain in multiple ways, like a human. Not entirely realistic to create from scratch very easily. The other option would be to create a robot that is able to execute one task very well, such as the magician robot. I'd imagine a robot that would be able to perform someting, as those are relatively easier to create. For example, a robot that would do a little dance while playing some music, or one that would be able to draw something on request.

What we might learn from this depends on the angle you're approaching this from. I should mention that there are already quite a few examples of robots that are able to entertain in a specific manner, as I've already named Shimon, pet robots, and of course the Magician robot. By creating an entertaining robot, we could learn where the limits are of what we find entertaining of a robot. Are there things that are entertaining when done by humans, but not by robots? Or vice-versa?