Have you hugged a robot today? Charles Arthur and Ian Peel on the rise of the emo machines

You may think that the cuddly rubber-skinned dinosaur robot on Steve Bannerman's shoulder is just another low-priced Christmas gift. But to Bannerman, a former Apple staffer who set up Quicktime TV (which became the iTunes Store), Pleo, as the dinosaur is called, might just be the future of human-machine interaction. Pleo, made by a company called Ugobe, coos and even sings. Rub its neck and stomach and it blinks its baby-like eyes and turns towards you and writhes happily. He likes it," says Bannerman. "He's got sound and video sensors," he explains. When it's stroked, the machine reacts with - well, you'd call it pleasure. Bannerman has only been with Ugobe since April; he'd previously cashed out of Apple at the height of the dotcom boom. But Pleo fascinated him: "I fell in love with this dinosaur," he says. "I loved the artificial intelligence component." He points to Wall-E, Pixar's latest: "What's cool is that they built character into it.