If you want to give the perfect hug, embrace your partner for somewhere between five and 10 seconds and don't worry about arm position, a new study suggests. Psychologists in London looked at how much pleasure volunteers got from engaging in hugs of different durations and orientations. Longer hugs, between five and 10 seconds, were more pleasant than very short hugs (one second), the experts found, but arm position doesn't really seem to matter. Results suggest'special care should be taken to avoid extremely brief hugs', although the researchers don't know exactly when a hug becomes too long and awkward. The new study could help design more friendly robots, which have been evaluated less positively after hugs that are'too short', they claim.

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The rise of robots hasn't exactly gone smoothly, but companies are determined to get it right. Today, LG announced that it's deploying a fleet of robots at Incheon International Airport in Seoul, South Korea. This isn't the first we've heard of these adorable robot friends. LG announced them earlier this year, and they've been hanging out in the Seoul airport for the last five months as part of a beta test. During that time, LG engineers have been testing and improving their performance, while the robots presumably loitered and caused trouble. But now that they're out of their rebellious teenage years, they're ready to be pressed into service.

For many families, the tablet has become the central, shared computing device in the home. It's a hub for learning, for entertainment, and for staying connected. But what if your tablet was even more interactive? What if it woke up when you came home, recognized your face, and suggested a couple of things you might want for dinner? What if, when asked a spoken question, it could tailor its answer directly to you, instead of just offering a blanket response? A new device called Jibo can do these things, and it could mark the next step in group computer interaction in the home.

But while the San Francisco entrepreneur misses his mother and father in Australia, he doesn't worry about their health. That's because he's pinged multiple times per day about their medication management and activity levels via an app connected to the PillDrill Wi-Fi health hub in their home. When the parents pop a pill, the system updates that the medication has been ingested and even registers their current state of mind with a scannable mood cube -- a different emotion is pictured on five of the six sides to represent comfort levels and pain. Havas, the founder of the company that manufactures the PillDrill, isn't trying to be creepy; he's trying to be cognizant of his parents' health care -- and stay ahead of trouble. In 2012, around 300,000 Americans called poison control hotlines after accidentally ingesting medications, according to the National Poison Control Center.

Already busy dealing with customers in phone stores, train stations, and departments stores, Pepper the robot has now been put to work in two hospitals in Belgium. The android, which can understand and respond to a range of human emotions, started assisting visitors at two health facilities in Ostend and Liege on Monday. Pepper launched to great fanfare in Japan exactly a year ago, with the first batch of 1,000 units snapped up in just 60 seconds. The creation of Japanese telecom giant SoftBank and French robotics company Aldebaran SAS, the robot is being marketed as an assistant for businesses and also as a companion for families and those living alone. Standing 120-cm tall, Pepper can converse in a number of languages and also communicate via its torso-based tablet.