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126 Modern Robotics

this state, I can take this action that leads to the person’s taking this
behavior and getting my needs satiated.”
Breazeal’s latest robot creation is called Leonardo. Unlike
Kismet, Leonardo has a full torso with arms and legs and looks
like a furry little Star Wars alien. With the aid of artificial skin
and an array of 32 separate motors, Leonardo’s facial expressions
are much more humanlike than Kismet’s. Its body language now
includes shrugs.
Leonardo’s learning capabilities are new and impressive. The
robot can learn new concepts and tasks both by interacting with
a human teacher and by imitating what it sees people do, starting
with facial expressions and simple games.
In the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), director Steven
Spielberg retold the fairy tale of Pinocchio through an artificially
intelligent robot that looks like a little boy. This is a robot that
can love—indeed, that needs to love. Although only partially
successful, the film gave an idea of the promising but troubling
relationships between emotional robots and humans in the not
too distant future. The beginnings of that future can be seen in
the laboratory today as people respond to Kismet, Leonardo, and
their successors.

The Future of Sociable Robots

In 2002, Breazeal published Designing Sociable Robots as a guide
to the many dynamic processes that interact in Kismet to produce
its complex behavior. She also draws some important conclusions
that can guide the future of this exciting new aspect of robotics.
For example, her observations of interactions between Kismet and a
variety of students and colleagues suggest that robots may advance
much more quickly toward fully humanoid status if they can draw
humans into interacting with them.
In recent years, a number of developments in robotics has
brought closer the day when robots can help with many aspects
of daily life. These advances include walking with agility, the
ability to navigate sure-footedly in a chaotic world, and a better
ability to recognize and manipulate objects in the environment.