At the extreme end of the spectrum people try to marry sex dolls and stuffed animals. There is a continuum of how attached people will get to inanimate or artificially animate objects. So it would also not be surprising if studying engineers and psych academics that you will get skewed data - groups not known for being on the right side of the bell curve for human social interaction skills.
I think even in the cases of those prone to become attached to non-living items, the attachment is not necessarily a long-term bond.
Further, suspending disbelief, and anthropomorphizing everyday mechanical things is not very compelling... I have felt bad for my car.. I think an emotional bond with a car is a pretty typical thing in the US.. However, regardless of how strong and consuming it is, most people don't treat it as a substitute or even similar to a social relationship.
Honestly, I don't think it matters. I agree with the basic points the article makes as being more salient.. After all, despite the complexities, there are successful hardware businesses.
These robots (I have a Cozmo and a Jibo) are at their core a novelty robot or "thing" attached to a voice assistant.
Voice assistant are not "social" except to the autistic and those that have spent too much time reading about socializing in the academic literature rather than actually interacting with humans not in a study.
So they can't be social, and the robot part at the end of the day is basically a toy whose whiz-bang wears off rather quickly. I find a lot of the research on emotional connections to be a bit self-serving. There are some people that end up attached to a weird head thing, but most require something a bit smarter, it does not make a sizeable market.
Anyone in the toy industry could have looked at their financials and known this was a shitty idea, because at the end of the day none of these products have demonstrated that they are more than a toy attached to a voice assistant. Blaming retail channel cuts is a bit rich.
I think even in the cases of those prone to become attached to non-living items, the attachment is not necessarily a long-term bond.
Further, suspending disbelief, and anthropomorphizing everyday mechanical things is not very compelling... I have felt bad for my car.. I think an emotional bond with a car is a pretty typical thing in the US.. However, regardless of how strong and consuming it is, most people don't treat it as a substitute or even similar to a social relationship.