The Roomba Guy's Second Act: A Robot You'll Want to Snuggle(wsj.com)

  Cognitive Stack

  System 3 - Long Term Drives
  I love being petted.

  System 2 - Emotionally-Aware Reasoning
  Goal: Receive pets.

  IWM - Internal World Model
  Guardian in view (right, moderate distance). Being petted.

  My Guardian is paying attention to me. My Guardian is reaching a hand toward me.

  Jones describes two scenarios for when a Familiar’s owner comes home: In the first, the person bends down with arms wide open, ready for a hug. In the second, the person is rushed, with an armload of groceries, no time for robo-snuggles. The Familiar will know whether to run up or to hang back.

  Is a person happy or sad? Are they having an argument? When does a sad person want comfort... or solitude? The Familiar must be programmed to handle these scenarios, like an autonomous vehicle is programmed to handle tricky intersections.
  All of a Familiar’s behaviors are intended to be approachable and inoffensive, says Morgan Pope, a Familiar Machines roboticist who spent almost eight years at Disney Research. Some of the ways the robot moves are based on the moves of dogs and other animals: how close it comes to a person, the speed at which it approaches, even the way it bats its eyes and twitches its ears.
  Training a robot on the intricate timing of initiating interaction with a new person is an "enormously hard" problem, says Pope.