Page 16 - Designing Sociable Robots

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Acknowledgments

The word “kismet” is Turkish, meaning “destiny” or “fate.” Ironically, perhaps, I was
destined to build a robot like Kismet. I could have never built Kismet alone, however.
Throughout this book, I use the personal pronoun “I” for easier reading, but in reality, this
project relied on the talents of many, many others who have contributed ideas, shaped my
thoughts, and hacked code for the little one. There are so many people to give my heartfelt
thanks. Kismet would not be what it is today without you.
First, I should thank Prof. Rod Brooks. He has believed in me, supported me, and given
me the freedom to pursue not one but several ridiculously ambitious projects. He has been
my mentor and my friend. As a robotics visionary he has always encouraged me to dream
large and to think out of the box. I honestly cannot think of another place in the world,
working for anyone else, where I would have been given the opportunity to even attempt
what I have accomplished in this lab. Of course, opportunity often requires resources and
money, so I want to gratefully acknowledge those who funded Kismet. Support for Kismet
was provided in part by an ONR Vision MURI Grant (No. N00014-95-1-0600), and in part
by DARPA/ITO under contract DABT 63-99-1-0012. I hope they are happy with the results.
Next, there are those who have put so much of their time and effort into making Kismet
tick. There are my colleagues in the Humanoid Robotics Group at the MIT Artificial In-
telligence Lab who have worked with me to give Kismet the ability to see and hear. In
particular, I am indebted to Brian Scassellati, Paul Fitzpatrick, Lijin Aryananda, and Paulina
Varchavskaia. Kismet wouldn’t hear a thing if it were not for the help of Jim Glass and
Lee Hetherington of the Spoken Language Systems Group in the Laboratory for Computer
Science at MIT. They were very generous with their time and support in porting the SLS
speech recognition code to Kismet. Ulysses Gilchrist improved upon the mechanical design
of Kismet, adding several new degrees of freedom. I would like to acknowledge Jim Alser
at Tech Optics for figuring out how to make Kismet’s captivating blue eyes. It would not
the same robot without them.
I’ve had so many useful discussions with my colleagues over the years in the Mobile
Robots Group and the Humanoid Robotics Group at MIT. I’ve picked Juan Velasquez’s
brain on many occasions about theories on emotion. I’ve cornered Robert Irie again and
again about auditory processing. I’ve bugged Matto Marjanovic throughout the years to
figure out how to build random electronic stuff. Kerstin Dautenhahn and Brian Scassellati
are kindred spirits with the shared dream of building socially intelligent robots, and our
discussions have had a profound impact on the ideas in this book.
Bruce Blumberg was the one who first opened my eyes to the world of animation and
synthetic characters. The concepts of believability, expressiveness, and audience perception
are so critical for building sociable machines. I now see many strong parallels between his
field and my own, and I have learned so much from him. I’ve had great discussions with
Chris Kline and Mike Hlavac from Bruce’s Synthetic Characters Group at the MIT Media

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