At MIT, Cynthia Breazeal and her team are building robots with social intelligence that communicate and learn the same way people do. Her favorite robot is Leonardo. Leonardo is the most expressive robot in the world today. Leonardo’s expressiveness arises from its ability to establish and maintain eye contact, move its eyes, mouth, ears, and arms to express a wide range of emotions.

Although highly articulated, Leonardo is not designed to walk, it can gesture and is able to manipulate objects in simple ways. Although it is not humanlike, the developers have intentionally given Leonardo a youthful appearance to encourage people to playfully interact with it, much as one might with a young child.

Read more about Leonardo at this MIT Media Lab – Personal Robot Group project page.

The above video is from Cynthia Breazeal TED Talk: The rise of personal robots:

• Jeff Hawkins: What is the Source of Intelligence?
• When Ideas Have Sex
• Seadragon / Deep Zoom Technology
• Scott Berkun: The Myths of Innovation
• Robotic Spies: Hummingbirds, Dragonflies & Co.