With the larger ships inc I think it is good timing for a mod that adds in androids and other robots that act as pets and npcs (ie your starbound crew) I would love to see this, pretty sure nobody has done it yet. I could maybe offer some help but it isn't really up my alley. Discuss?
Yar that be the mod I compared to. I imagine it would be very similar to that but instead of people npc it would be robots and androids that do non people like things. Beeping and bopping and rolling or walking around.
You can always contact the author to see if you can do a robot addon for that mod. He is a pretty nice guy, and learning Starbound modding is realtively easy.. starbounder.org/Modding:Modding_Basics