The Aibo as therapist

The Seattle Times carries an Associated Press article on experiments to use robots for therapy of patients in old people's homes in Japan, including professor Toshiyo Tamura's experiments using Sony's Aibo.

Tamura also found that introducing a stuffed animal shaped like a dog got almost the same response from patients. But a stuffed animal can't be programmed to, for example, help an Alzheimer's patient remember the names of their visiting children. Neither, of course, can real animals.

Tamura and other proponents of robot therapy say it makes more sense to use machines: They are more sanitary. They don't bite or cause allergies. There's no need to feed them anything more than power.

[Read: seattle times