Remember when Web Watch told you about how dogs prefer to eat human food? Or, at the very least, they prefer to eat food that their human shows them is good to eat?
It ends up that dogs really are more aware of the people around them than we give them credit for. Perhaps the “man’s best friend” term really isn’t just a phrase, but something true and real.
That’s what scientists were trying to prove in a recent study about how DOGS INTERACT WITH ROBOTS.
The study setup robot arms and hands (but purposefully didn’t design the robot to look like a person), and had the robot give the dogs visual commands in the same manner a person would.
What they found was that the dogs would respond to the robot better after the dog observed a person interacting with the robot in a social manner first. In other words – just as in the food experiment – dogs would take their cues from a person as to whether the robot is something they should listen to or not.
Was the study perfect? No.
Dogs weren’t as prone to follow the robot’s directions as they would a human’s directions. But they did stick around closely to the robot if it was shown to be trusted.
What does this mean? Once dogs can take orders from robots, then dogs will no longer be our last line of defense when the E.T. invasion comes.
Then again, all the tests were related to trying to find hidden food. Sometimes a dog is just a hungry dog, you know?