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"Attention all parents: Disney, the company that wants to absorb all childhood happiness, both past and present, is planning to replace you with robots. Unsatisfied with the secondary love and attention they receive from controlling your favorite characters and cartoons, Disney means to spend quality time with the world\u2019s children in an attempt to feel what it\u2019s like to have a child of its own. (No, having subsidiaries like ABC and ESPN doesn\u2019t count.) \nAlthough the Mom-and-Pop-a-Tron 5000 isn\u2019t ready to hit the street yet, Disney's making serious progress. For example, the robotics experts at Disney\u2019s lab in Pittsburgh have created a humanoid robot that can play a game of catch.\nWhen I say \u201Cplay a game of catch\u201D, I don\u2019t mean it an ultra-efficient robot kind of way. This guy can lob a ball to you and, when you throw it back, can find, register, and catch it. The robot uses a Kinect to sense and track the trajectory of an object thrown directly at it, adjusting so that it can catch it with one hand.\nThe creepy part? When the robot catches the ball, it looks down at its hand, as if it were tracking the ball with its eyes. If it misses the catch, the robot will react, looking around for the ball or shaking its head in dismay. The robot is very attentive: It has sensors to track and follow the direction of whomever it\u2019s playing with, so it will turn and face its partner if they move out of the way.\nThis may not seem remarkable at first glance \u2014 most robots do things better than most people \u2014 begging the question: Why would you bother making it? The answer is, of course, that Disney means to get in on the time-honored American pastime of catch between parent and child.\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/11/25/disney-robots-catch/>