American researchers asked 143 schoolchildren aged six to 10 to "draw a picture of a robot doing something robots often do". Apparently the results "showed a clear stereotype of robots". "The children saw them as boxy humanoids, typically operating free of direct human control to engage in human-like work and play - about 30 per cent of the children drew them boogieing," reported the magazine.
Then some of the children were given lessons about robots.
Afterwards, "only one child drew a humanoid robot - most instead drew robots doing things like food processing or building cars". Much better.
But Noel Sharkey, a robots researcher at the University of Sheffield, doubted that "damping the children's ideas" would breed a generation of robot designers. And he said it was not surprising that the children's robots danced since "many real dancing humanoid robots have been built over the past 10 years". Plus we have the goal celebrations of gangly striker Peter Crouch to thank.
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