Japanese electronics giant Sony researcher Fumihide Tanaka shows his humanoid robot Qrio during an interview with AFP at the company\'s Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories in Tokyo.





If you are an introvert and making friends your biggest fear, good news! You will soon get the most doting loyal friend to lighten up your lonesome life.



Tanaka, part of Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratories is collaborating with the University of California at San Diego to study artificial intelligence to apply in future electronic products and this can help in understanding the problems of real life social interactions.



Tanaka sent the 58-centimeter (23-inch) tall Sony biped humanoid robot Qrio to a San Diego school to act as playmates for children, aged up to 24 months. It remote-controlled the robot from a hidden place for some 80 percent of the immersion sessions and very soon the children were found adapting themselves to the robot and empathizing with it considering it not a toy or a living human being but something between the two which they can befriend.



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