NOVA scienceNOW | Friendly Robots Slide Show | PBS

Cynthia Breazeal, Director of the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab, builds some of the world's most sociable robots. In this slide show, she introduces a few of her favorite non-human companions. NOVA scienceNOW airs five Tuesdays a year on PBS and is available for viewing 365 days a year online.

Video podcast produced by Susan K. Lewis. Interview with Cynthia Breazeal by Joe McMaster. Edited by David Levin and Gayle Anonuevo. NOVA is produced by WGBH in Boston. Major funding for NOVA scienceNOW is provided by the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additional funding is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan and Kavli foundations.

Visit the NOVA scienceNOW Web site at http://www.pbs.org/nova/sciencenow

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[Icescream08]

Why did Cynthia Breazeal created Kismet?

How did she come up with the idea of Kismet?

[Pretsal]

What is the goal or point of putting so much time and money into developing robots that can develop an emotional interaction with a human? I mean should we even be trying to put this purpose into robots? I suppose for toys it makes sense, but why even do that? The resources could be used to do something much more useful with them, right? Just a thought.

[Esurname]

The emotional interaction between robots and humans will be life long , unlike people or pets robots do not die. As with pets, emotion works on a superficial child like level. A robot can be made to feel soft ,look cute make pleasing sounds or even give an unconditional hug. These all create basic human emotional responses. Once I have finished building my robot the interraction part is not that difficult.