A Robot Now Comes With A Heart

A robot is essentially a machine that takes in information through its senses, and in turn acts intelligently on the basis of that information. So can robots be intelligent enough to express real humanlike emotions?

According to the creators of the Heart Robot the answer is definitely, yes. This small puppet like robot is made out of flexible plastic, padding, silk , and rubber. These materials were chosen specifically so that people would be inclined to touch "Heart".

In terms of senses, the bot has the ability to detect objects at a distance, listen, balance, and even sense touch.

The robot's nervous system consists of five small computers which each look after a different part of the puppet bot. The sophisticated inner workings enables him to respond to human behavior remarkably accurately. If Heart becomes agitated, his breathing becomes faster and his heartbeat speeds up. If he relaxes, he becomes "happier".

I imagine there will be great debate on whether or not these emotions from Heart are considered to be "real" emotions, meaning that they are spontaneous, not faked. This leaves me to wonder if any robot would really be capable of being emotionally deceptive.

What do you think?