In these 2 interviews from the LIREC research project (http://lirec.org/node/1864), Prof Peter McOwan explains how his team is exploring how to develop new forms of technology for artificial companions, either robotic or virtual. He emphasizes that LIREC is unique in this emerging field of enquiry in that it incorporates long-term studies in genuine environments such as an office or a house, and also whether a robot can migrate to different devices, in effect switching bodies. He also covers how his emotion tracker iCat software can identify and recognise faces and expressions and then react to them. This is an ambitious project, incorporating a vast array of interconnected technological, social and philosophical questions: physical robot design, software architecture, modelling the behaviour and emotions of companions as well as their capacity to detect the emotional expressions of humans, not to mention questions of ethics, memory, and longitudinal studies of human-companion relationships. To watch John Paul Bichard's LIREC documentary in full, please visit www.lirec.org/node/1864. For more information go to www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk and www.lirec.eu.