ABSTRACT
Robot attachment is then not easy to dismiss as illegitimate or even morally insignificant without rejecting other, similar forms of attachment. While attachment can supplement and reinforce a sense of trust or loyalty in a human-human model, it is possible encouraging detachment in human-robot interactions can undermine people's reasons for interacting regularly with a robot. One relationship model between humans and nonhumans that can be looked to for possible insights into human-robot relationships is that of human-animal teamwork. In World War II, via the Dogs for Defense program, troops worked with civilian pets that were volunteered by their owners for military service, and then subsequently trained and integrated into military specialties such as explosives detection. Dogs for Defense ended in 1945 because of the many logistical problems involved with borrowing civilian dogs and retraining them to be integrated back into their original families, post-specialized military canine training.
