A robot for the lonely, anyone?

Was watching tv yesterday and there was this program with the latest gadgets from Samsung. They featured this “april” robot, kinda small, and with a face shaped more like an alien than that of a human. According to the inventor, they’re thinking in the year 2010 (a mere 6 years away), a person can go home from work and this april robot, using biofeedback, will be able to ‘sense’ a person’s feelings and will then play whatever music will suit this person's mood. He can also talk to this robot and use it as a sort of outlet to tell the robot how his day was, etc.

Whoa! Won’t we have friends or family in the future that we’ll need a robot to talk to? Or maybe they think that we’ll be so busy with other things and not have time for personal relationships? Wouldn’t it be so sad for us, if we need to buy a robot just to have someone (something) to talk to and listen to us?

That these inventors are willing to invest in this, means that they believe there will be a market for this robot in the first place. We can be certain that the person who buys it is pretty lonely. A single guy (or girl) without family, relatives, or friends! How sad is that?!?