Paro is a seal Robot developed to engage in interaction with human beings. Robot’s appearance is from a baby of harp seal covered with pure white and soft fur. It is equipped with the four primary senses: sight (light sensor), audition (determination of sound source direction and speech recognition), balance and the above-stated tactile sense. Its moving parts include vertical and horizontal neck movements, front and rear paddle movements and independent movement of each eyelid, which is important for creating facial expressions.

The robot is able to exhibit three kinds of behaviors: proactive, reactive, and physiological. Pro-active behaviors are generated considering internal states, stimuli, desires, and a rhythm of the day. The basic behavioral patterns include some poses and some motions. The seal robot reacts to sudden stimulation like turning the head towards a source of sound and behaves following the rhythm of a day with some spontaneous desires such as sleep and tiredness. Indeed, Paro has its own “physiological life”. Paro generates its behavior depending on its internal states, rhythm of a day and stimulations. There are several candidates of behaviors in a situation and each behavior has a weight that is used as probability of behavior selection. When Paro is stroked gently, it feels good, and adds some weight on a candidate of its behavior that was chosen in the situation. Therefore, Paro responds to pats and to external stimuli by moving the body and the head in a coordinated way, by fluttering the eyelids, making sounds, purring if cuddled.

People who interact with this robot mostly report a sense of pleasure, enjoyment and involvement. They spend time stroking the robot, exploring its behaviour, stimulating the emission of sounds and the movements. Some kiss it and smile even if they are perfectly aware that it is not a living being.

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Amazon Books

	Creative Projects with LEGO Mindstorms by Benjamin Erwin Buy new: $20.64 / Used from: $13.00 A good place to start, especially for kids, with Lego Mindstorms
	A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics by Joe Jones Buy new: $20.67 / Used from: $15.13 Very good for programming not so much behavior as control. Language and controller agnostic