A warm welcome to author Aidee Ladnier joining us here today to talk about her dreamspinner press release “The Applicant”.

Aidee tells us about teddy bears 😉 shares an excerpt and she also brought with her a giveaway to participate in.

Welcome Aidee 🙂

True Life Teddy Bear Robots by Aidee Ladnier

Thank you so much Love Bytes Reviews for hosting me today!

If you check out my new novella, THE APPLICANT, you’ll meet one very cuddly juggernaut in the form of a teddy bear robot. Roboticist Forbes Pohle builds his robot to help children both run and hide from gunfire and also translate foreign languages. But if you do a quick Google search, you’ll see that Forbes isn’t the only roboticist who thinks teddy bears make great robots.

I personally remember Teddy Ruxpin an 1980s animatronic toy that use to both terrify and delight my sister and I. Made to simulate a storyteller, popping in his audio tape would cause his mouth to move while a recorded voice told a story. But inventors today want a teddy bear that can do more than just tell tall tales.

In 2010 Fujitsu developed a teddy designed to motivate children and stimulate the elderly. It giggled when you tickled its tummy. It smiled back when you smiled at it. Using 300 separate behaviors and multiple sensors, cameras, and microphones, the bear assesses the person interacting with it and reacts to them based on their emotional state.

 

With more physical activity in mind, the human-sized Robear was designed by the Japanese research institute Riken in 2015 to carry patients to and from their beds to their wheelchairs. It has giant soft rubber arms that can lift more than 206 pounds. And it always bows politely before it picks you up.

Around the same time, the MIT Media Lab began testing Huggable, a small blue robot bear for pediatric patients who are undergoing extended hospital stays in the ICU or for cancer treatment. He can play I Spy and refer to patients by their own names.

Not to be outdone, Google is also working on a teddy bear robot that can do a lot of the things an Amazon Echo can do. It has cameras and microphones and will respond to voice commands to turn on music and answer simple questions. It also has facial recognition software in place so it knows who it is talking to and can respond to previously recorded preferences. It will also record surveillance video and sound just like the hidden Nanny-cams available on the market. This sounds just a little creepy.

 

Most recently, the National University of Singapore’s Social Robotics Lab began working on a teddy bear robot to help autistic children practice their social interactions. It has a camera in its nose so that a therapist can remain outside the room while the child plays with the robot, interacting with the child through the teddy’s interface.

So choosing a teddy bear to be the template for his teddy bear was only natural for Dr. Forbes Pohle. If only he’d been able to control it a little better. You’ll find his adventures in the novella THE APPLICANT published by Dreamspinner Press this January.

So tell me, do you think teddy bear robots are helpful or just plain creepy?

 

Don’t forget to sign up for my Rafflecopter Giveaway. There are prizes and gift cards!

Blurb

How can something so cuddly and adorable be so destructive? The teddy bear robot decimating his lab is only the first disaster of the day for roboticist Forbes Pohle. If he can figure out how to end its rampage, he still has to interview applicants for the position of research assistant and convince the time-traveler on his doorstop that they should be making their future right now. Oliver Lennox didn’t travel back in time to have a quickie in the blast chamber—but it certainly is fun. This younger Forbes is a sweeter, more innocent version of his lover. And it will be hard to leave him behind in the past.

If you like sexy nerds, humor, plenty of action, and a love story not even time can disrupt, this romantic adventure has the perfect credentials for the job.

Forbes Pohle worked the needle-nose pliers carefully behind the eye sensors of his teddy bear. He needed to make one little adjustment—

The buzzer on the door sounded, nerve-jangling and insistent, from the speaker overhead.

Startled, Forbes jerked the wire he was fiddling with free from its connection, rendering the small robot blind. The head-plate spring snapped, and the access panel clipped his hand as it closed. Forbes swore and shook his stinging fingers as the front door buzzer blared again.

Frustrated, he threw down the pliers and ran both hands through his mop of brown hair. Reacting to the clatter, the tiny robot turned its head left and then right before running off the table.

Luckily the teddy bear caught itself with its face when it hit the floor.

Undaunted, the bear scrambled to its furry feet and darted toward the other side of the lab. Forbes sighed at the sound of another imperative buzz.

“You won’t get the job if you don’t stop with the doorbell.” He stood and shoved the ends of his wrinkled white dress shirt back into his khaki pants. He typed in the power-down sequence for the bear before shutting the lab door and walking toward the front of the house. His visitor had graduated to using the door buzzer as percussion, the drone now going off and on in a jaunty rhythm.

Forbes still wasn’t sold on hiring a research assistant, but he wanted a lab assistant and he needed an administrative assistant.

Most of all, he longed for a friend.

Hiring someone wasn’t the best way to go about finding one, but working with somebody was a good start, right?

Forbes checked his reflection in the foyer mirror. The dark brown of his eyes was almost invisible against the bloodshot whites. His stomach rumbled, and he promised himself he’d take a break and eat as soon as the interview concluded.

At the next buzz, he spun and yanked open the large front door. Holy crap.

He wished he’d gotten a little sleep last night instead of staying up to tinker with the bear.

A wiry man stood on Forbes’s doorstep. He was dressed in a T-shirt, tight black jeans, black nail polish, and red Chuck Taylors. His strawberry blond hair was spiked up in front. The corners of his eyes and his freckled nose wrinkled.

Forbes blinked back his surprise and opened his mouth, expecting words to come out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Come in.” Forbes waved him inside the house. “I’m Forbes Pohle. I’m the one who posted the job listing.”

The man grinned and held out a hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Dr. Pohle. I’m Oliver Lennox. Please call me Oliver.”

Forbes blushed at the title as he clasped Oliver’s warm hand. Forbes was a PhD three times over, but he hadn’t put that in the advertisement.

“If you’ll come this way, we can talk in the lab.” He turned and walked back down the hallway to the adjacent laboratory, assuming the applicant would follow.

“Oh, I didn’t come about…,” Forbes heard him say before he ran into Forbes’s back. To be fair it wasn’t his fault. Forbes had stopped short in the lab doorway.

During the few minutes he’d stepped out to answer the door, the laboratory had been destroyed.

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Aidee Ladnier, an award-winning author of speculative fiction, began writing at twelve years old but took a hiatus to be a magician’s assistant, ride in hot air balloons, produce independent movies, collect interesting shoes, fold origami, send ping pong balls into space, and amass a secret file with the CIA. A lover of genre fiction, it has been a lifelong dream of Aidee’s to write both romance and erotica with a little science fiction, fantasy, mystery, or the paranormal thrown in to add a zing.

You can find her on her blog at http://www.aideeladnier.com or on her favorite social media sites:

• Tumblr: http://aideemoi.tumblr.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aideelad
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AideeLadnier
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6570769.Aidee_Ladnier
• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/aideelad/