Paro is a robot that mimics a baby seal. It was developed by a Japanese robotics company called AIST. Two pictures from the parorobots.com web site are included at the bottom of this article. More photos are available from company's photo gallery and video gallery
The Paro has been featured on NPR in the IEEE Spectrum, and in the New York Times. An article in the Washington Post in 2008 describes the use of Paro robots in a retirement community in Mclean, Virginia.
Does this robot introduce any ethical dilemmas?
Further Reading
Gail F. Melson, Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Alan Beck and Batya Friedman, Robotic Pets in Human Lives: Implications for the Human-Animal Bond and for Relationships with Personified Technologies, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 65, No. 3, 2009, pp. 545-567
Anne Tergesen and Miho Inada, It's not a stuffed animal, It's a $6,000 Medical Device Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2010
David Feil-Seifer and Maja J. Mataric, Ethical Principles for Social Assistive Robotics, Interaction Laboratory Report, Center for RObotics and Embedded Systems, Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California.
Robert Sparrow, The March of the Robot Dogs, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia, Working Paper Number 2002/7
Amanda Sharkey and Noel Sharkey Granny and the robots: Ethical issues in robot care forthe elderly, Unpublished Report, University of Sheffield, URL accessed 31 October 2012.
Images
Here is one (of several) YouTube Videos showing the robot in action.