During this exploration of everyday life in the future, we’re looking at pets. In the shiny world of tomorrow, you won’t be walking any old run-of-the-mill Fido—because we’ll have high-tech cuddling machines.

 

Robot pets have graced the pages of Popular Science on more than a few occasions. But first, we had to figure out what people want in a pet. In 1893, we laid out the parameters for designing the ideal (live) pet. And things have only gotten more complicated—and interesting—from there. In the future, it won’t be so strange to have a pet that runs on batteries instead of kibble. And perhaps, instead of just keeping us company, they’ll also do our bidding.

 

In this episode, we talk to Gail Melson, a psychologist at Purdue University who has studied how people react to real and robotic animals; Jean-Loup Rault, who researches animal behavior and welfare at the University of Melbourne in Australia; Dan Goldman, a physicist at the University of Georgia who designs robots that model real animals; and last but not least, Bill Smart, a roboticist at Oregon State University.

 

If you’ve ever dreamed of having a dog that doesn’t need to be walked, a cat that doesn’t require a litter box, or a 3-D printed interactive unicorn, look no further.

 

Futuropolis is a biweekly podcast on the Panoply network. This week's episode is sponsored by Braintree, code for easy online payments. If you're working on a mobile app and need a simple payments solution. check out Braintree. For your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, go you braintreepayments.com/future.

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