Robotics experts agree that it may be necessary to learn from biological organisms

Curiosity is important when biological organisms learn to interact with their environment.

Robots that mimic the behaviour of human babies have been built. Actually, there is now a whole litter of robot puppies playing happily along at Sony's research and development lab in Paris, France. The pups - apparently all called Aibo - are put in something that resembles a babies playground, where they are interacting with eachother, and the present toys.

A short video that shows the robot puppies in action can be found here. Robotics experts now hope to be able to build better robots by looking at how cats, dogs, and human babies act. At the same time researchers hope to learn about child development from the experiments.

You can read more about the robot puppies by following the links below. Playground Experiment, Sony Computer Science Laboratory

Robo-pups created with curiosity in mind - A litter of robotic Aibo puppies with added artificial "curiosity" is put through its paces at Sony's European research and development laboratory [New Scientist]