I think most new parents have semi-wished for, like, a life-size cutout of themselves attached to a Roomba that could roll into their nursery at 3am when the baby randomly wakes and make vaguely reassuring noises to soothe them back to sleep. I know I have. But I'm not sure it's wise to enable or encourage this level of parental disengagement.
Anyway, what I really wanted to share is "The Robot and the Baby", by John McCarthy (yeah, the same one): http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.p...