A Passion To Build A Robot With Social Skills And A Smile

from the make-your-robots-smile dept

There are plenty of issues to think about when designing robots, but I'd bet not many people working in robotics think about how to make sure their robots have social skills. The NY Times is running an interesting interview with Dr. Cynthia L. Breazeal who is the author of Designing Sociable Robots, a book on this very topic. She's also displaying a bunch of robotic flowers that respond to the humans around them at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. For all the Star Wars geeks, you'll be happy to know that she claims she was inspired by R2D2 and C3PO. One interesting point she makes is that her work in making robots sociable has actually made her learn a lot more about how humans interact than how to make robots sociable. Of course, that's pretty much the same thing that Will Wright set out to do a few months back with his very simple robot.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread



Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.