Designing Sociable Robots

by Cynthia L. Breazeal

Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human. Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.

263 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Youmna · Rating 3 out of 5]

عرض لمشروع إزاي عملوا الروبت أكثر ما هوا عشان يفهمك .. فانت محتاج تفهم حاجات وبعدين ترجع تقرأ ..
مرجع لو عاوز تعرف اي حاجة عن الروبت
kismt
فلسفته أجزاءه وظيفته .. etc

i followed selective reading, just read what i want to know, and I hoped to read it all but the style of writing wasn't that attractive one.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written over 10 years ago by Cynthia Breazeal, a robotic scientist from MIT Media Lab, about her vision of a robot that behaves in a socially acceptable manner with human beings. In the book she describes her work and her team's work on Kismet, an infant-like robot, at MIT. Cynthia Breazeal describes the system design and implementation of Kismet, citing research studies by numerous scientists in the field and also makes use of social studies of human being. Even though this book was written over 10 years ago (it was published in 2002), I found the topics still very valuable and relevant in today's development of intelligent agents. This area is so new and futuristic that her vision of a truly sociable robot will still be years to come.

Cynthia Breazeal is the person behind the Jibo project with a recent successful funding campaign in Indiegogo. While Jibo the robot has not been released yet at the writing of this review, one can speculate that a lot of the ideas from Breazeal's work in Kismet would appear in Jibo.

[Tom Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book for many reasons. It provides an interesting look into the innovation behind Kismet, a hint into the workings of Jibo, and a laugh at the expense of Pepper ("The first emotional robot").

The writing was not the most engaging, and the organization was hard to follow at times, but I suppose that's to be expected for what essentially is an extended yet laymanned dissertation.