Walk by Cynthia Breazeal's workbench in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, and you can't help but notice a hunk of aluminum filled with silicon chips and electric motors, a machine purposely shaped and sized like a human head. Actually, what you can't help noticing is that it looks lonely. Its big, red rubber lips are turned down in a frown, its fuzzy eyebrows are heavy, its curly pink ears appear crestfallen. Its huge baby-doll eyes are scanning the room, searching for someone.
So it's no wonder that when Breazeal comes into the room and sits down in front of her needy little robot, which she calls Kismet, its mood begins to change. Looking straight into Kismet's eyes, Breazeal offers a "human face stimulus." Kismet's eyebrows go straight up, making its baby blues appear even wider as it looks straight back at its creator with growing interest. "Mutual regard," she says. Then Kismet wiggles its ears up and down. "Greeting behavior," says Breazeal. Kismet's expressions alter into another state, the sort a parent loves to evoke in a child. Happiness. Kismet is all smiles. Breazeal, who created this creature, is not surprised: "Happiness is the achievement of a desired stimulus," she says.
Next she talks baby talk, cooing like a new mother. That keeps Kismet interested, smiling and watching. Just for contrast, Breazeal begins to sway back and forth. Uh-oh. Kismet doesn't like that at all. It looks annoyed, says Breazeal, because it's "overstimulated." Kismet turns up a lip, raises one eyebrow, lowers the other. The message is clear: Stop this nonsense! So Breazeal turns away, and Kismet grows calmer, but only for a while. Deprived of attention, face stimulus gone, Kismet grows sad. Breazeal turns around. Happiness returns.
Breazeal can keep this going, keep Kismet happy by paying constant attention to the robot as if it were an infant, which in a sense it is. She can, for example, pick up a toy stuffed dinosaur and begin playing with Kismet. Kismet likes that. But like an infant, Kismet can become tired. Enough of this, Kismet seems to say as it slowly begins closing its eyes and goes to sleep.
Before you ask the question, Breazeal has the answer: "The behavior is not canned," she says. "It is being computed and is not a random thing. The interaction is rich enough so that you can't tell what's going to happen next. The overarching behavior is that the robot is seeking someone out, but the internal factors are changing all the time." Each interaction is different; each exchange has its own action and narrative.
