Close Engagements with Artificial Companions -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Dedication page -- Table of contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Contributors -- Section I. Setting the scene -- In good company? On the threshold of robotic Companions -- Introducing artificial Companions -- Section II. Ethical and philosophical issues -- Artificial Companions and their philosophical challenges -- Conditions for companionhood -- Acknowledgements -- Arius in cyberspace: Digital Companions and the limits of the person -- Introduction -- Changing boundaries -- Augmentation and companionship -- Types of relationship -- Authoritative representations/representatives -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- Section III. Social and psychological issues -- Conversationalists and confidants -- Robots should be slaves -- Why slaves? -- Why we get the metaphor wrong -- Costs and benefits of mis-identification with AI -- Getting the metaphor right -- Don't we owe robots anything? -- Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- Wanting the impossible -- Introduction -- Technical objections -- Wanting to be wanted -- A tale of two robots -- Love and/or sex -- Conclusion -- Falling in love with a Companion -- Identifying your accompanist -- Look, emotion, language and behavior in a believable virtual Companion -- Introduction -- A believable Companion -- A good friend at run-time -- Looking like a human -- Communicating like a human -- Behaving like a human -- New Companions -- Introduction -- Artificial Intelligence revisited -- Energy autonomy -- Speculative designs -- Conclusions -- On being a Victorian Companion -- Acknowledgements -- Section IV. Design issues: Building a Companion -- The use of affective and attentive cues in an empathic computer-based Companions -- Introduction -- Related work -- Example -- Affective interaction -- Empathetic feedback.

Conclusion -- Acknowledgement -- GRETA: Towards an interactive conversational virtual Companion -- Introduction -- Interactive applications -- Conclusion -- A world-hybrid approach to a conversational Companion for reminiscing about images -- Introduction -- The Senior Companion system -- System architecture -- The Hybrid-World approach -- Ensuring persistence of personality through intelligent adaptation -- Conclusion and future work -- Acknowledgement -- Companionship is an emotional business -- Artificial Companions in society -- The characteristics of potential users -- Requirements gathering and knowledge elicitation -- Questionnaires -- Focus groups -- Technological naivety -- Multiple minor disabilities -- User sensitive inclusive design -- The use of theatre -- Conclusion -- Requirements for Artificial Companions -- Introduction -- Types of function for digital Companions -- Motives for developing, funding, buying or using ACs -- Problems of achieving the enabling functions -- Is the solution statistical? -- Can it be done? -- Conclusion -- You really need to know what your bot(s) are thinking about you -- Introduction -- How an Artificial Companion might have theory of mind -- Artificial Companion robots will need to be able to learn socially, by imitation -- An Artificial Companion robot will not be one robot but several -- A family of Artificial Companion robots could acquire an artificial culture of their own -- Conclusion -- Section V. Special purpose Companions -- A Companion for learning in everyday life -- Design challenges of a Companion for learning in everyday life -- The role of the Companion -- The competence of the Companion -- The nature of the interface -- The learning Companion in action -- Potential negative aspects of learning Companions -- Conclusion.

The Maryland virtual patient as a task-oriented conversational Companion -- Introduction -- Toward the next generation of virtual patients -- Comparisons with other systems -- Discussion -- Living with robots -- Safety in the home -- Robot Companions and traditional dolls in therapeutic applications -- Deceit, illusion and infantilization -- The human touch -- Conclusion -- Section VI. Afterward -- Summary and discussion of the issues -- Overview: The nature and significance of Artificial Companions -- Congenial support for the vulnerable: the COMPANIONS approach -- Key social, psychological and ethical issues raised by Artificial Companions -- Challenges to creating effective appropriate Artificial Companions -- Approaches to designing and building Artificial Companions -- Policy to help shape appropriate Artificial Companion uses -- The future: Can we live in harmony with Artificial Companions? -- Can a person engage in an I-Thou relationship with an Artificial Companion? -- Appendix 1. Resources -- References -- Index -- The series Natural Language Processing.