A group of 25 European roboticists, developmental psychologists, and neuroscientists have been working together on the Feelix Growing project, trying to develop robots that are more in tune with human emotions and more intelligent and sensitive than ever before. The idea is to build perceptive and caring robots that will be able to learn when a person is happy, sad, or angry, so that they'll be better able to live alongside us. The learning is done through artificial neural networks, with cameras and sensors helping the robots to read facial expressions, tone of voice, and other things associated with different emotional states, and the scientists hope the technology will allow the robots to differentiate cries of pain, for instance, from those of happiness. The ultimate goal is that the robots will learn from experience how best to respond to these emotional cues and adapt their behavior accordingly. —Heather Wax