The present comment focuses on the distinction between attachment as bond formation and expectations of availability and responsiveness (security) within attachment relationships. We enumerate key components of bonding and functions of carer secure base support. Our analysis has implications for design and suggests that robots are unlikely to serve effectively as sole carers. Even with robots as part-time carers, attachment-like bonds would likely focus on human carers. Similarly, although infants and children would certainly build expectations regarding the availability and responsiveness of robot carers, the quality of human care would probably be the determining influence on later development and competence. Notwithstanding their limitations of robots as attachment figures they have considerable potential to extend parental care and enrich infant exploration. The Sharkey’s paper and further consideration of robots as carers for infants, children, older adults, an

Petters, Dean

Schönbrodt, Felix D.

Waters, Everett

English

Waters, E

Schoenbrodt, F

University of Birmingham Research Portal

Strange carers Robots as attachment figures and aids to parenting

Open Access LMU

Introduction Sharkey & Sharkey (2010) have written a most interesting paper raising interesting ethical and prac-tical issues regarding robots as sole and part-time carers.  What competencies can robots achieve in the near term?  Can we experience social related-ness with them (and they with us)?  Can robots care (in the sense of nurture) for us? Are there risks in deploying robots as carers for the young? Can we care (in the affective sense) for them?  As the Sharkey's note (p. 11) some definitional difficulties attend the term attachment. This is not to say that attachment is beyond definition, only that it often goes undefined. How one approaches the roles of robots as carers begins with how one conceptual-izes attachment.  Are we referring to a specific mode of relating or to social relatedness in general? And how do attachment relationships differ from one to another?  Attachment Bowlby (e.g., 1969), Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall (1978), and Sroufe & Waters (1977) have provide a definitional framework that defines at-tachment as a significant relationship distinct from friendship and other social ties. They highlight as the hallmarks of attachment (a) preference, (b) fa-miliarity , (c) relative uniqueness, (d) identity, (d) use as a secure base, and (e) grief and mourning in response to loss.  Attachment figures are preferred to others, espe-cially in the face of uncertainty or danger.  They are familiar in the sense that one has a history of inter-action with them upon which expectations about their availability, responsiveness, and competence are built.  Bowlby often spoke of attachment as monotropic, tending to be focused on one or a very few figures. Current thinking favors relative unique-ness; that is, a person might view more than one or two individuals as attachment figures but the num-ber would be far fewer than they might know as friends, neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, or well-wishers.  In addition to being bounded in num-ber, each has a distinct identity in that they are ex-perienced as individuals rather than as members of an indistinct class; they are not strictly interchange-able and expectations about availability and respon-siveness can differ from one to the other. Most im-portantly, an attachment figure is someone who is used as a secure base from which to explore and as a haven of safety in retreat. As a secure base for ex-Strange Carers: Robots as  Attachment Figures and  Aids to Parenting Dean Petters                   Everett Waters           Felix Schönbrodt University of Birmingham          SUNY at Stony Brook /        Humboldt University (Berlin) Abstract The present comment focuses on the distinction between attachment as bond formation and expectations of availability and responsiveness (security) within attachment relationships. We enumerate key components of bonding and functions of carer secure base support. Our analysis has implications for design and suggests that robots are unlikely to serve effectively as sole carers. Even with robots as part-time carers, attachment-like bonds would likely focus on human carers.  Similarly, although infants and children would certainly build ex-pectations regarding the availability and responsiveness of robot carers, the quality of human care would proba-bly be the determining influence on later development and competence. Notwithstanding their limitations of robots as attachment figures they have considerable potential to extend parental care and enrich infant explora-tion. The Sharkey’s paper and further consideration of robots as carers for infants, children, older adults, and To appear in:  Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, 2010, Vol. 11, xxx-xxx. Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 2 ploration, attachment figures play an important role in developing knowledge, experience, and compe-tencies that are important to later development and adaptation. As a haven of safety, they play an im-portant role in  physical security and affect regula-tion.  And finally, attachment is associated with a distinctive response to loss that marks such relation-ships as uniquely significant and deeply integrated into a person's understanding of their world and their self.   This perspective reflects a great deal of ethologi-cal observation, empirical research, and theoretical analysis and has proven useful in translating theory into practice.  Moreover, definitions play an impor-tant implication for the kinds of competencies we would look for in a robot carer.  Security in Attachment Relationships Informally, the term secure attachment suggests a bond that is tight or strong.  This was the sense in psychoanalytic and classical learning theories. With the decline of drive theories, the notion that attach-ments differ primarily in strength has fallen into dis-use. Instead, individual differences are conceptual-ized in terms of the cognitive and behavioral facets of secure base use and support.  To be secure in an attachment relationship means (a) to be confident in an attachment figure's availability, responsiveness, and competence - the expectation of that person be-ing "always there for me", and (b) as a result to ex-plore confidently from the attachment figure as a secure base and to find ready comfort in proximity and contact as needed. The difference between at-tachment as intensity versus quality is nicely cap-tured in the German translation of security as si-cherheit (certainty or confidence). Primarily im-plicit, pattern based, and automatic, the cognitive and behavioral components of attachment have strong emotional associations and induce strong emotional responses when confirmed, violated, im-peded, or interrupted. Concepts like presence versus absence and de-gree of consolidation have proven difficult to opera-tionalize.  Instead, since the 1970's researchers have used naturalistic observations, the Ainsworth Strange Situation laboratory procedure, and the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview to assess the cognitive and behavioral components of security in attachment relationships in developmental, clinical, and cross-cultural studies. Much of this work is re-viewed in the recent Handbook of Attachment (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). Observational research has demonstrated that the expectations of an attachment figure's availability and responsiveness we call attachment security or insecurity (a) arise from actual experience, (b) tend to be stable into childhood and early adulthood, (c) are open to revision in light of further experience, (d) can differ from one relationship to another, and (e) can provide a prototype around which are con-structed initial expectations in adult relationships and initial goals in parenting (e.g., Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Grossmann, Grossmann, & Waters, 2005). Risks Attending Attachment to Robot Carers The distinction between attachment (bondedness) and security-insecurity (expectations about the avail-ability and responsiveness of an attachment figure) points to different mechanisms and different risks.   Imprinting.  Aside from work on species identifi-cation and imprinting in non-human species, we know very little about the role early experience plays in activating the capacity to form lasting bonds or any impact early experience might have on later social responsiveness.  However, Rutter (e.g. 1999) has concluded from a detailed review of clinical re-search that lack of opportunity to form attachment (usually due to early chronic illness, institutional care, or multiple foster placements) is a significant factor in later psychopathology. The question then is whether bonding to a robot is better than not bond-ing at all, and whether it provides sufficient founda-tions for later social learning.  As the Sharkey's point out, endowing a robot with even minimal caregiving competence will be a challenge. Asimov's prescription that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm implies considerable expertise in what is necessary and tolerable moment to moment, and over significant periods of develop-ment.  Few, if any, adults begin their parenting ca-reers with such expertise. Moreover, even sole car-ers operate in a social context. They depend instead on a great deal of trial and error, feedback from the child, problem solving, error correction and com-pensatory behavior, and observational learning.  Much of our success as parents thus depends on liv-ing in communities of helpful more experienced car-ers and on the fact that skills not successfully pre-pared or instilled by primary carers can be "backed up" by learning in the peer group and in other social contexts. Even human carers would likely fail if they undertook child rearing in such an impoverished en-Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 3 vironment. The plausibility then of robots as sole carers depends not only on endowing them with caregiving skills but on their potential for social learning.    The challenges to robots as sole carers increase dramatically as the child grows older.  As the child's cognitive skills increase, the attachment figure's contributions become increasingly abstract and dif-ficult to implement in software.  Even attachment researchers often assume that the function of attach-ment figures is primarily to insure safety and sup-port social-emotional development. But a major function of attachment is to support the growth of competence and  independence (Waters, 2002). Se-cure base figures are not simply someone to run to in an emergency. They play an important role in making the child feel comfortable to explore new environments, practice and consolidate skills, gain practical knowledge about the self and the physical and social world, and build conceptual tools that support adaptive independent behavior. To mention just a few components of good secure base support, the secure base figure enriches exploration by:  •     guiding attention •     giving explanations •     modelling positive affect •     modelling caution and reassurance •     anticipating, pointing out or clearing away ob-stacles to safe productive exploration •     helping resolve problems so that exploration is maintained and profitable •     making sure the child does not overlook possi-bilities for deeper exploration  •     helping the child construct interpretations - e.g., was this experience typical or an outlier? •     providing plausible information about mecha-nisms •     listening to the child's explanations and refining or extending them Even if robots could perform basic maintenance of young infants, the skills required of a competent attachment figure become almost impossibly ab-stract. We simply don't know enough about the mechanisms of bonding and later sociability to know whether bonding to a robot carer as a primary attachment figure would be damaging.  In our esti-mate robots will not be judged competent to the task in the near term.   Insecurity.  A second concern has to do with robots' competence as supplementary carers - can they sup-port confident expectations of availability and re-sponsiveness (secure attachment) or would they nec-essarily engender insecure attachments and unac-ceptable risks to later adjustment. Let us assume that robots would most likely be serving as semi-autonomous carers performing maintenance, super-vision, and enrichment activities for intervals and in specific contexts. This would be analogous to the doctor-nurse relationship; the doctor (parent) is re-sponsible for the overall plan of care and for specific decisions and procedures; the nurse (robot) acts on specific instructions, exercises a considerable range of autonomy in other respects, and has a clear proto-col for alerting and returning control to the doctor.  In such an arrangement, it seems likely that only the tie to the primary  human carer would meet the above criteria for attachment. Familiarity, prefer-ence, and some expectations about availability and responsiveness would be possible; perhaps even some basic retreat to the robot when distressed (if only to activate a call to the parent).  Uniqueness, identity, complex secure base use, and mourning in response to loss seem less plausible. It would seem then that experience with the human carer, expecta-tions about its availability and responsiveness, and experience using it as a secure base for exploration, i.e. the quality of the relationship to the human carer, would determine whether the child realized the benefits of a secure caregiving relationship.  Ob-viously, the child's view of its parent as available, responsive, always there for me, could be enhanced or compromised by how the parent deployed the ro-bot carer. The Sharkey's cite examples of parents whose use of robot carers seems quite selfish and neglecting.  Would such parents engender confi-dence and security in their own interactions with the child? Would an older child not sense that the par-ents are unavailable and selfish? In all likelihood this, not the quality of care provided by the robot, would play the greater role in shaping later character and adjustment.  Conclusion Isaac Asimov’s (1940) short story ‘Strange Play-fellow’ describes how a young girl called Gloria forms a strong attachment bond towards Robbie, her robotic carer.  Even with the nearly 70 years of tech-nological development since ‘Strange Playfellow’ was published, robots with the capability of Robbie are still an unrealisable fiction.  In highlighting this reality gap between possible future aspirations for robotic carers and their present potential, Sharkey Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 4 and Sharkey have stimulated interaction between robotics and attachment study, and helped clarify what are worthwhile and achievable aims for current research.  Considering how and why currently achievable robots might fail as carers for human infants is to the advantage of both robotics and at-tachment theory.  This is because to answer these questions involves firstly considering the develop-mental requirements for, and functions of, attach-ment relationships, and then considering how hu-man carers fulfill these requirements and functions.   Although robots will not be effective sole carers of infants in the near term, they may find useful roles extending the range and quality of care that humans can provide, and enriching childhood explo-ration and in providing care for older adults and in-dividuals with special needs.  We agree that each of these applications has ethical dimensions even if  the stakes for robotic carers are less high, and may avoid the hazards which Sharkey and Sharkey set out in their interesting analysis.  Many existing ex-amples of human-robot interaction involve only short term interactions. Sharkey and Sharkey have taken a useful step toward exploring the full range of robot human interactions and promoting interdis-ciplinary collaboration.    References Ainsworth, M.,  Blehar, M., Waters, E., Wall, S., (1978) Patterns of Attachment: a psychological study of the strange situation. Erlbaum, Hills-dale, NJ, 1978. Asimov, I. (1940). Strange Playfellow, Super Sci-ence Stories, September, pp. 67-77. Bowlby, J., (1969). Attachment and Loss: volume 1 Attachment. Basic books, New York. Cassidy, J. and Shaver, P. (2008). Handbook of At-tachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Ap-plications (2nd Edition). New York: Guilford. Grossman, K.E., Grossman, K & Waters, E., (2005). Attachment from Infancy to Adulthood. New York: Guilford. Rutter, M. (1999). Maternal deprivation reassessed.  London: Penguin Books UK. Sroufe, L. A., Egeland, B., Carlson, E., & Collins, W. A. (2005) The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Publications. Sroufe, L. A., & Waters, E. (1977). Attachment as an organizational construct. Child Development, 48, 1184-1199. Waters, E. (2002). Live long and prosper.  Essay retrieved online October, 20, 2009.  http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/gallery/live_long/live_long.html   About the Authors Dean Petters,  School of Computer Science University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT U.K. E-mail: d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk  Dean Petters is a Research Fellow at the University of Birming-ham. He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the Uni-versity of Birmingham.  His research interests range across the fields of cognitive modelling, evolutionary psychology, infant development and visual object perception.  He is interested in the use of autonomous software agents to simulate psychological phenomena, in particular using agents to simulate infant attach-ment behaviour in naturalistic environments and laboratory set-tings, such as the Strange Situation Experiment.    Everett Waters, Department of Psychology Stony Brook University Stony Brook, New York 11794-2500 U.S.A. E-mail: everett.waters@sunysb.edu Everett Waters (Ph.D., Minnesota, 1977) is Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Co-author with Mary Ainsworth of the 1978 book Patterns of attachment, he has written extensively on attachment theory and published influential studies on the meas-urement and stability of individual differences in attachment dur-ing infancy and from infancy to adulthood. He shares with his co-authors an interest in simulation studies of secure base behavior.  Felix Schönbrodt LMU Department Psychologie Leopoldstr. 13 80802 Munich Germany E-mail: felix@nicebread.de Felix Schönbrodt, psychologist, received his diploma at Saarland University (Germany) in 2006 with the development of a ques-tionnaire for evolved motives. Currently he works at Humboldt University (Berlin) and Ludwig-Maximilians-University (Munich) on autonomous agent design, psychological assessment in virtual environments, and implicit measures of personality. His dissertation investigates participant's interactions with a virtual spouse for the assessment of partner related motives, and attach-ment related strategies in virtual situations. Other research pro-jects are concerned with the implementation of a system theoretic model of motivation.  

Attachment and Loss: volume 1 Attachment. Basic books,

Attachment as an organizational construct.

Attachment from Infancy to Adulthood.

Live long and prosper. Essay retrieved online

Maternal deprivation reassessed.

Patterns of Attachment: a psychological study of the strange situation. Erlbaum,

The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood.

U.S.A. E-mail: everett.waters@sunysb.edu Everett Waters (Ph.D.,

Strange Carers

Universität München: Elektronischen Publikationen

Introduction 
Sharkey & Sharkey (2010) have written a most 
interesting paper raising interesting ethical and prac-
tical issues regarding robots as sole and part-time 
carers.  What competencies can robots achieve in 
the near term?  Can we experience social related-
ness with them (and they with us)?  Can robots care 
(in the sense of nurture) for us? Are there risks in 
deploying robots as carers for the young? Can we 
care (in the affective sense) for them?  
As the Sharkey's note (p. 11) some definitional 
difficulties attend the term attachment. This is not to 
say that attachment is beyond definition, only that it 
often goes undefined. How one approaches the roles 
of robots as carers begins with how one conceptual-
izes attachment.  Are we referring to a specific 
mode of relating or to social relatedness in general? 
And how do attachment relationships differ from 
one to another?  
Attachment 
Bowlby (e.g., 1969), Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, 
& Wall (1978), and Sroufe & Waters (1977) have 
provide a definitional framework that defines at-
tachment as a significant relationship distinct from 
friendship and other social ties. They highlight as 
the hallmarks of attachment (a) preference, (b) fa-
miliarity , (c) relative uniqueness, (d) identity, (d) 
use as a secure base, and (e) grief and mourning in 
response to loss.  
Attachment figures are preferred to others, espe-
cially in the face of uncertainty or danger.  They are 
familiar in the sense that one has a history of inter-
action with them upon which expectations about 
their availability, responsiveness, and competence 
are built.  Bowlby often spoke of attachment as 
monotropic, tending to be focused on one or a very 
few figures. Current thinking favors relative unique-
ness; that is, a person might view more than one or 
two individuals as attachment figures but the num-
ber would be far fewer than they might know as 
friends, neighbors, acquaintances, colleagues, or 
well-wishers.  In addition to being bounded in num-
ber, each has a distinct identity in that they are ex-
perienced as individuals rather than as members of 
an indistinct class; they are not strictly interchange-
able and expectations about availability and respon-
siveness can differ from one to the other. Most im-
portantly, an attachment figure is someone who is 
used as a secure base from which to explore and as 
a haven of safety in retreat. As a secure base for ex-
Strange Carers: Robots as  
Attachment Figures and  
Aids to Parenting 
Dean Petters                   Everett Waters           Felix Schönbrodt 
University of Birmingham          SUNY at Stony Brook /        Humboldt University (Berlin) 
Abstract 
The present comment focuses on the distinction between attachment as bond formation and expectations of 
availability and responsiveness (security) within attachment relationships. We enumerate key components of 
bonding and functions of carer secure base support. Our analysis has implications for design and suggests that 
robots are unlikely to serve effectively as sole carers. Even with robots as part-time carers, attachment-like 
bonds would likely focus on human carers.  Similarly, although infants and children would certainly build ex-
pectations regarding the availability and responsiveness of robot carers, the quality of human care would proba-
bly be the determining influence on later development and competence. Notwithstanding their limitations of 
robots as attachment figures they have considerable potential to extend parental care and enrich infant explora-
tion. The Sharkey’s paper and further consideration of robots as carers for infants, children, older adults, and 
To appear in:  Interaction Studies: Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems, 
2010, Vol. 11, xxx-xxx. 
Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 
2 
ploration, attachment figures play an important role 
in developing knowledge, experience, and compe-
tencies that are important to later development and 
adaptation. As a haven of safety, they play an im-
portant role in  physical security and affect regula-
tion.  And finally, attachment is associated with a 
distinctive response to loss that marks such relation-
ships as uniquely significant and deeply integrated 
into a person's understanding of their world and 
their self.   
This perspective reflects a great deal of ethologi-
cal observation, empirical research, and theoretical 
analysis and has proven useful in translating theory 
into practice.  Moreover, definitions play an impor-
tant implication for the kinds of competencies we 
would look for in a robot carer.  
Security in Attachment Relationships 
Informally, the term secure attachment suggests 
a bond that is tight or strong.  This was the sense in 
psychoanalytic and classical learning theories. With 
the decline of drive theories, the notion that attach-
ments differ primarily in strength has fallen into dis-
use. Instead, individual differences are conceptual-
ized in terms of the cognitive and behavioral facets 
of secure base use and support.  To be secure in an 
attachment relationship means (a) to be confident in 
an attachment figure's availability, responsiveness, 
and competence - the expectation of that person be-
ing "always there for me", and (b) as a result to ex-
plore confidently from the attachment figure as a 
secure base and to find ready comfort in proximity 
and contact as needed. The difference between at-
tachment as intensity versus quality is nicely cap-
tured in the German translation of security as si-
cherheit (certainty or confidence). Primarily im-
plicit, pattern based, and automatic, the cognitive 
and behavioral components of attachment have 
strong emotional associations and induce strong 
emotional responses when confirmed, violated, im-
peded, or interrupted. 
Concepts like presence versus absence and de-
gree of consolidation have proven difficult to opera-
tionalize.  Instead, since the 1970's researchers have 
used naturalistic observations, the Ainsworth 
Strange Situation laboratory procedure, and the 
Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview to assess the 
cognitive and behavioral components of security in 
attachment relationships in developmental, clinical, 
and cross-cultural studies. Much of this work is re-
viewed in the recent Handbook of Attachment 
(Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). 
Observational research has demonstrated that the 
expectations of an attachment figure's availability 
and responsiveness we call attachment security or 
insecurity (a) arise from actual experience, (b) tend 
to be stable into childhood and early adulthood, (c) 
are open to revision in light of further experience, 
(d) can differ from one relationship to another, and 
(e) can provide a prototype around which are con-
structed initial expectations in adult relationships 
and initial goals in parenting (e.g., Sroufe, Egeland, 
Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Grossmann, Grossmann, 
& Waters, 2005). 
Risks Attending Attachment to Robot Carers 
The distinction between attachment (bondedness) 
and security-insecurity (expectations about the avail-
ability and responsiveness of an attachment figure) 
points to different mechanisms and different risks.   
Imprinting.  Aside from work on species identifi-
cation and imprinting in non-human species, we 
know very little about the role early experience 
plays in activating the capacity to form lasting bonds 
or any impact early experience might have on later 
social responsiveness.  However, Rutter (e.g. 1999) 
has concluded from a detailed review of clinical re-
search that lack of opportunity to form attachment 
(usually due to early chronic illness, institutional 
care, or multiple foster placements) is a significant 
factor in later psychopathology. The question then is 
whether bonding to a robot is better than not bond-
ing at all, and whether it provides sufficient founda-
tions for later social learning.  
As the Sharkey's point out, endowing a robot 
with even minimal caregiving competence will be a 
challenge. Asimov's prescription that a robot may 
not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow 
a human being to come to harm implies considerable 
expertise in what is necessary and tolerable moment 
to moment, and over significant periods of develop-
ment.  Few, if any, adults begin their parenting ca-
reers with such expertise. Moreover, even sole car-
ers operate in a social context. They depend instead 
on a great deal of trial and error, feedback from the 
child, problem solving, error correction and com-
pensatory behavior, and observational learning.  
Much of our success as parents thus depends on liv-
ing in communities of helpful more experienced car-
ers and on the fact that skills not successfully pre-
pared or instilled by primary carers can be "backed 
up" by learning in the peer group and in other social 
contexts. Even human carers would likely fail if they 
undertook child rearing in such an impoverished en-
Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 
3 
vironment. The plausibility then of robots as sole 
carers depends not only on endowing them with 
caregiving skills but on their potential for social 
learning.    
The challenges to robots as sole carers increase 
dramatically as the child grows older.  As the child's 
cognitive skills increase, the attachment figure's 
contributions become increasingly abstract and dif-
ficult to implement in software.  Even attachment 
researchers often assume that the function of attach-
ment figures is primarily to insure safety and sup-
port social-emotional development. But a major 
function of attachment is to support the growth of 
competence and  independence (Waters, 2002). Se-
cure base figures are not simply someone to run to 
in an emergency. They play an important role in 
making the child feel comfortable to explore new 
environments, practice and consolidate skills, gain 
practical knowledge about the self and the physical 
and social world, and build conceptual tools that 
support adaptive independent behavior. To mention 
just a few components of good secure base support, 
the secure base figure enriches exploration by:  
•     guiding attention 
•     giving explanations 
•     modelling positive affect 
•     modelling caution and reassurance 
•     anticipating, pointing out or clearing away ob-
stacles to safe productive exploration 
•     helping resolve problems so that exploration is 
maintained and profitable 
•     making sure the child does not overlook possi-
bilities for deeper exploration  
•     helping the child construct interpretations - e.g., 
was this experience typical or an outlier? 
•     providing plausible information about mecha-
nisms 
•     listening to the child's explanations and refining 
or extending them 
Even if robots could perform basic maintenance 
of young infants, the skills required of a competent 
attachment figure become almost impossibly ab-
stract. We simply don't know enough about the 
mechanisms of bonding and later sociability to 
know whether bonding to a robot carer as a primary 
attachment figure would be damaging.  In our esti-
mate robots will not be judged competent to the task 
in the near term.   
Insecurity.  A second concern has to do with robots' 
competence as supplementary carers - can they sup-
port confident expectations of availability and re-
sponsiveness (secure attachment) or would they nec-
essarily engender insecure attachments and unac-
ceptable risks to later adjustment. Let us assume that 
robots would most likely be serving as semi-
autonomous carers performing maintenance, super-
vision, and enrichment activities for intervals and in 
specific contexts. This would be analogous to the 
doctor-nurse relationship; the doctor (parent) is re-
sponsible for the overall plan of care and for specific 
decisions and procedures; the nurse (robot) acts on 
specific instructions, exercises a considerable range 
of autonomy in other respects, and has a clear proto-
col for alerting and returning control to the doctor.  
In such an arrangement, it seems likely that only the 
tie to the primary  human carer would meet the 
above criteria for attachment. Familiarity, prefer-
ence, and some expectations about availability and 
responsiveness would be possible; perhaps even 
some basic retreat to the robot when distressed (if 
only to activate a call to the parent).  Uniqueness, 
identity, complex secure base use, and mourning in 
response to loss seem less plausible. It would seem 
then that experience with the human carer, expecta-
tions about its availability and responsiveness, and 
experience using it as a secure base for exploration, 
i.e. the quality of the relationship to the human 
carer, would determine whether the child realized 
the benefits of a secure caregiving relationship.  Ob-
viously, the child's view of its parent as available, 
responsive, always there for me, could be enhanced 
or compromised by how the parent deployed the ro-
bot carer. The Sharkey's cite examples of parents 
whose use of robot carers seems quite selfish and 
neglecting.  Would such parents engender confi-
dence and security in their own interactions with the 
child? Would an older child not sense that the par-
ents are unavailable and selfish? In all likelihood 
this, not the quality of care provided by the robot, 
would play the greater role in shaping later character 
and adjustment.  
Conclusion 
Isaac Asimov’s (1940) short story ‘Strange Play-
fellow’ describes how a young girl called Gloria 
forms a strong attachment bond towards Robbie, her 
robotic carer.  Even with the nearly 70 years of tech-
nological development since ‘Strange Playfellow’ 
was published, robots with the capability of Robbie 
are still an unrealisable fiction.  In highlighting this 
reality gap between possible future aspirations for 
robotic carers and their present potential, Sharkey 
Petters, Waters, Schonbrot                                                                                                                 Strange carers 
4 
and Sharkey have stimulated interaction between 
robotics and attachment study, and helped clarify 
what are worthwhile and achievable aims for current 
research.  Considering how and why currently 
achievable robots might fail as carers for human 
infants is to the advantage of both robotics and at-
tachment theory.  This is because to answer these 
questions involves firstly considering the develop-
mental requirements for, and functions of, attach-
ment relationships, and then considering how hu-
man carers fulfill these requirements and functions.   
Although robots will not be effective sole carers 
of infants in the near term, they may find useful 
roles extending the range and quality of care that 
humans can provide, and enriching childhood explo-
ration and in providing care for older adults and in-
dividuals with special needs.  We agree that each of 
these applications has ethical dimensions even if  
the stakes for robotic carers are less high, and may 
avoid the hazards which Sharkey and Sharkey set 
out in their interesting analysis.  Many existing ex-
amples of human-robot interaction involve only 
short term interactions. Sharkey and Sharkey have 
taken a useful step toward exploring the full range 
of robot human interactions and promoting interdis-
ciplinary collaboration.    
References 
Ainsworth, M.,  Blehar, M., Waters, E., Wall, S., 
(1978) Patterns of Attachment: a psychological 
study of the strange situation. Erlbaum, Hills-
dale, NJ, 1978. 
Asimov, I. (1940). Strange Playfellow, Super Sci-
ence Stories, September, pp. 67-77. 
Bowlby, J., (1969). Attachment and Loss: volume 1 
Attachment. Basic books, New York. 
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About the Authors 
Dean Petters,  
School of Computer Science 
University of Birmingham 
Edgbaston, Birmingham 
B15 2TT 
U.K. 
E-mail: d.d.petters@cs.bham.ac.uk 
 
Dean Petters is a Research Fellow at the University of Birming-
ham. He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the Uni-
versity of Birmingham.  His research interests range across the 
fields of cognitive modelling, evolutionary psychology, infant 
development and visual object perception.  He is interested in the 
use of autonomous software agents to simulate psychological 
phenomena, in particular using agents to simulate infant attach-
ment behaviour in naturalistic environments and laboratory set-
tings, such as the Strange Situation Experiment.   
 
Everett Waters, 
Department of Psychology 
Stony Brook University 
Stony Brook, New York 11794-2500 
U.S.A. 
E-mail: everett.waters@sunysb.edu 
Everett Waters (Ph.D., Minnesota, 1977) is Professor of Social 
and Developmental Psychology at the State University of New 
York at Stony Brook. Co-author with Mary Ainsworth of the 
1978 book Patterns of attachment, he has written extensively on 
attachment theory and published influential studies on the meas-
urement and stability of individual differences in attachment dur-
ing infancy and from infancy to adulthood. He shares with his co-
authors an interest in simulation studies of secure base behavior. 
 
Felix Schönbrodt 
LMU Department Psychologie 
Leopoldstr. 13 
80802 Munich 
Germany 
E-mail: felix@nicebread.de 
Felix Schönbrodt, psychologist, received his diploma at Saarland 
University (Germany) in 2006 with the development of a ques-
tionnaire for evolved motives. Currently he works at Humboldt 
University (Berlin) and Ludwig-Maximilians-University 
(Munich) on autonomous agent design, psychological assessment 
in virtual environments, and implicit measures of personality. His 
dissertation investigates participant's interactions with a virtual 
spouse for the assessment of partner related motives, and attach-
ment related strategies in virtual situations. Other research pro-
jects are concerned with the implementation of a system theoretic 
model of motivation. 
 


Dean Petters

Everett Waters

Felix Schönbrodt

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http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13580/1/schoenbrodt_13580.pdf

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