Interaction Studies 11:2 (2010), –. doi 10.1075/is.11.2.01sha issn 1572–0373 / e-issn 1572–0381 © John Benjamins Publishing Company he crying shame of robot nannies An ethical appraisal Noel Sharkey & Amanda Sharkey University of Sheield, UK Childcare robots are being manufactured and developed with the long term aim of creating surrogate carers. While total childcare is not yet being promoted, there are indications that it is ‘on the cards’. We examine recent research and developments in childcare robots and speculate on progress over the coming years by extrapolating from other ongoing robotics work. Our main aim is to raise ethical questions about the part or full-time replacement of primary carers. he questions are about human rights, privacy, robot use of restraint, deception of children and accountability. But the most pressing ethical issues throughout the paper concern the consequences for the psychological and emotional wellbeing of children. We set these in the context of the child development literature on the pathology and causes of attachment disorders. We then consider the adequacy of current legislation and international ethical guidelines on the protection of children from the overuse of robot care. Who’s to say that at some distant moment there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother – whose stock in trade is love. From I Sing the Body Electric, Twilight Zone, Series 3, Episode 35, 1960 . Introduction A babysitter/companion on call round the clock to supervise and entertain the kids is the dream of many working parents. Now robot manufacturers in South Korea and Japan are racing to fulil that dream with afordable robot “nannies”. hese currently have game playing, quizzes, speech recognition, face recognition and limited conversation to capture the preschool child’s interest and attention. heir mobility and semi-autonomous function combined with facilities for visual and auditory monitoring are designed to keep the child from harm. Most are pro- hibitively expensive at present but prices are falling and some cheap versions are already becoming available.