Page 32 - Designing Sociable Robots

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The Vision of Sociable Robots 13

Kismet’s diverse motor systems and the different levels of control that produce Kismet’s
observable behavior.
• Chapter 10 I present an in-depth look at the motor system that controls Kismet’s face.
It must accommodate various functions such as emotive facial expression, communicative
facial displays, and facial animation to accommodate speech.
• Chapter 11 I describe Kismet’s expressive vocalization system and lip synchronization
abilities.
• Chapter 12 I offer a multi-level view of Kismet’s visual behavior, from low-level oculo-
motor control to using gaze direction as a powerful social cue.

• Chapter 13 I summarize our results, highlight key contributions, and present future work
for Kismet. I then look beyond Kismet and offer a set of grand challenge problems for
building sociable robots of the future.

1.5 Summary

In this chapter, I outlined the vision of sociable robots. I presented a number of well-known
examples from science fiction that epitomize the vision of a sociable robot. I argued in favor
of constructing such machines from the scientific pursuit of modeling and understanding
social intelligence through the construction of a socially intelligent robot. From a practical
perspective, socially intelligent technologies allow untrained human users to interact with
robots in a way that is natural and intuitive. I offered a few applications (in the present,
the near future, and the more distant future) that motivate the development of robots that
can interact with people in a rich and enjoyable manner. A few key aspects of human
social intelligence were characterized to derive a list of core ingredients for sociable robots.
Finally, I offered Kismet as a detailed case study of a sociable robot for the remainder of
the book. Kismet explores several (certainly not all) of the core ingredients, although many
other researchers are exploring others.