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REAL-WORLD ROBOTS 53

Baby Doll

Rodney Brooks’s robot laboratory at MIT has undertaken a long-
term effort to develop robots that can in some sense understand and
respond appropriately to human body language, facial expressions,
and vocal intonations. At MIT, Brooks had developed a research
robot called “IT” by 1995. In 1998, Brooks and Angle decided to
create a new kind of baby-doll toy based on IT. It would eventually
be called “My Real Baby.”
Besides having realistic skin and simulated facial muscles, the
robot was able to sense how it was being handled. In addition to
being able to move its lips, cheeks, and forehead (allowing it to raise
its eyebrows, smile, or grimace, for example), the robot could also
perform other behaviors, such as sucking its thumb or a bottle.
The doll’s “emotional state” changed according to how it was
handled. For example, if held upside down, it became “unhappy”
and complained with varying degrees of intensity. The doll would
laugh when tickled and burp when patted on the back—though it
sort of flinched if approached too quickly from in front. The doll
even appeared to “learn” by speaking increasingly complex state-
ments after it had been played with for many hours.
This rather sophisticated behavior required that the doll have a
large variety of parts. For example, a ball-bearing in a cage sent sig-
nals that the robot could interpret to determine whether it was being
gently rocked or roughly handled. Light sensors tried to determine
whether the doll was being hugged or tickled. A magnetic sensor
reported whether the baby was being given its bottle.
Angle and Brooks believed they had the basic technology in hand,
but when they showed the prototype (called BIT for “Baby IT”) to
toy companies, they were in for a rude awakening. It turned out that
the toy industry did not know what to do with this sophisticated
robot disguised as a doll. To start with, the typical retail price for
“talking dolls” and similar toys was less than the cost of BIT’s parts
alone. Further, toy industry marketers had no idea how to market a
doll that had so many new and hard-to-explain features.
Finally, in 1998, iRobot and Hasbro, one of the world’s leading
toymakers, made an agreement that iRobot would develop new toy
concepts and Hasbro would market those it felt were appropriate.