Robot-to-robot nurturing: A call to the research community

Nurturing behaviors comprise a fundamental class of actions that can occur between individuals. They are vital components of the behavioral repertoires of numerous biological organisms and are objects of study in numerous disciplines. In this call to the community, we consider what nurturing means for biological and artificial systems, how robot-to-robot (R2R) nurturing is related to developmental robotics including epigenetic and morphogenetic robotics, why R2R nurturing should be considered an important topic, and why we advocate using an evolutionary framework to develop R2R nurturing. We also suggest next steps for the research community.