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Rodney Brooks was, at the time, working on smaller, insect-like robots. Breazeal helped out and ended up with a cameo role in Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, the underground-classic documentary in which filmmaker Errol Morris profiles four people--including Brooks--who were pursuing unusual passions. When Brooks moved on to larger robots, Breazeal became the chief architect on Cog. Other than Brooks, she is the most senior person in the lab today. She got her Sc.D. this year, producing a dissertation titled Sociable Machines: Expressive Social Exchange Between Humans and Robots. Now she is headed to the job market.
Breazeal played an active role in building Kismet. Drawing on her experience helping build two prior complex robots, she worked on everything from the mechanized design for Kismet's facial features to tinkering with its body parts in the shop. Breazeal took great care with the robot's facial features, which she considered important to making it an appealing social actor. She found a special-effects expert to make human-like eyes and personally glued on false eyelashes purchased in a beauty-supply store. And she put bright red lips on its metal mouth, using surgical tubing colored in with a red pen.
BODY PARTS
Kismet has an array of built-in features that help it act in a human-like way. It has four color cameras that allow it to "see," and its computers are programmed to help it recognize objects and measure distances. Kismet seeks out colorful toys and faces actively. It recognizes faces by looking for flesh tones and eyes. Kismet can hear, but only when humans speak into its microphone. And Kismet has motor capabilities that allow it to shift its eyes and crane its head toward particular sights and sounds. One of the robot's best features is its ability to register expressions that correspond to its emotional state. When it is surprised, it can raise its eyebrows. When it is sad, it can frown. Kismet can also vocalize, in a sing-song babble. In January, it said its first words: "[][ch'ao<186>][el'ao<139>z] ['aa<138>rr<109>]." It wasn't "Mama," but Breazeal was proud enough to put it on Kismet's website.
Kismet was designed with motivational drives, drawn from developmental psychology. A computer attached to the robot displays bar graphs that reflect its three drives--social, stimulation and fatigue. Kismet's desire to satisfy these drives leads it to engage in a variety of purposeful behaviors, much as a human baby would. When its social drive is high, indicating that it is lonely, the robot actively seeks out human interaction. When its stimulation drive is high, it is drawn to other forms of interaction, including playing with colorful toys. Since it has no arms, it can't pick up a toy itself. But if it stares plaintively at a toy, a nearby human will usually pick it up and bring it over. When Kismet has had enough stimulation, its fatigue drive kicks in.