I was inspired by Nikki's blog about altruistic robots because it talks about peoples conception of robots lacking emotions and personal motivation. Resulting in people not believing in altruism from artificial creatures. However, I think that especially this lack of personal motivation can play a key role in altruism. When people are kind to you, it is still quite often done out of an expectation of personal gain. What is expected differs per person and situation. But for example a person returning a lost wallet might still hope to get a small monetary reward. However, with robots, this lack of personal motivation means that they will genuinely carry out acts of kindness out of altruism.
An interesting way to create a robot experience with this would be to have a robot which would travel by train throughout the country. It would take a seat somewhere on the train but whenever it would be busy it would offer its seat to people getting on, thus creating an act of kindness. As such many people would be able to experience this and it would be interesting to see the reactions of people. Especially those whom generally wouldn't be offered a seat. Would they still decline, or accept because of it being a robot?