Breazeal, Cynthia

Breazeal, Cynthia

(1968–  ) American

Roboticist

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1968, Cynthia Breazeal (pronounced like “Brazil”) grew up in Califor-nia. Her father was a mathematician and her mother was a computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. When she was only eight, Breazeal saw the 1970s film Star Wars and became intrigued with the “droids.”

Besides robots, as a student the young Breazeal was also fascinated by medicine and astronomy. When she attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, Breazeal con-sidered a future career in NASA. UC also had a robotics center, and Breazeal encountered there the possibility of building planetary robot rovers.

After getting her undergraduate degree in electrical and computer engineering, Breazeal applied for graduate school to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The MIT robotics lab, headed by Rodney Brooks, was developing a new generation of small, agile robotic rovers based in part on observing how insects moved. Breazeal’s work on two such robots, named Attila and Hannibal, helped prove the feasibility of mobile robots for planetary exploration while furnishing her a topic for her master’s thesis.

Besides its implications for space research, Breazeal’s work with Attila and Hannibal demonstrated the feasibil-ity of building robots that were controlled by hundreds of small, interacting programs that detected and responded to specified conditions or “states.” It gave concrete reality to Brooks’s and Breazeal’s belief that robots, like living organ-isms, grew by building more complex behaviors on top of simpler ones, rather than depending on some single top-down design.

Brooks then announced that he was starting a new proj-ect: to make a robot that could interact with people in much the same way people encounter one another socially. The result of the efforts of Brooks, Breazeal, and their colleagues was the creation of a robot called Cog. Cog attempted to replicate the sense perceptions and reasoning skills of a human infant. Cog had eyes that focused like those of a person. Like an infant, Cog could pick up on what people nearby were doing, and what they were focused on.

Breazeal had done much of the work in designing Cog’s stereovision system. She and another graduate student also programmed many of the interacting feedback routines that allowed Cog to develop its often-intriguing behavior. Cog could focus on and track moving objects and sound sources. Eventually, the robot gained the kind of hand-eye coordina-tion that enabled it to throw and catch a ball and even play rhythms on a snare drum.

For her doctoral research, Breazeal decided to design a robot unlike the 6-foot, 5-inch (1.96 m) Cog; one that instead would be more child-sized and childlike. She named the new robot Kismet, from the Turkish word for fate or for-tune. Kismet looks a bit like the alien from the film ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. The robot is essentially a head without arms or legs. With big eyes (including exaggerated eye-brows), pink ears that can twist, and bendable surgical tub-ing for lips that can “smile,” Kismet has a “body language” that conveys a kind of brush-stroked essence of response and emotion. Kismet has a variety of hardware and software features that support its interaction with humans.

Like Cog, Kismet’s camera “eyes” function much like the human eye. However, the vision system is more sophis-ticated than that in the earlier robot. Kismet looks for col-orful objects, which are considered to be toys, for potential play activities. An even higher priority is given to potential playmates, which are recognized by certain facial features, such as eyes, as well as the presence of flesh tones. Kismet does not actually understand the words spoken to it; how-ever, it perceives the intonation and rhythms of human speech and identifies them as corresponding to emotional states. If a visitor addresses Kismet with tones of friendly praise (as perhaps one might a baby, or a dog), the robot moves to a “happy” emotional state. On the other hand, a harsh, scolding tone moves Kismet toward an “unhappy” condition.

Kismet’s “emotions” are not just simple indicators of what state the software decides the robot should be in, based on cues it picks up from humans. Rather, the robot has been so carefully “tuned” in its feedback systems that it establishes a remarkably natural rhythm of vocalization and visual interaction. Kismet reacts to the human, which in turn elicits further human responses.

Kismet’s successor is called Leonardo. Unlike Kismet, Leonardo has a full torso with arms and legs and looks rather like a furry little Star Wars alien. With the aid of arti-ficial skin and an array of 32 separate motors, Leonardo’s facial expressions are much more humanlike than Kismet’s. Body language now includes shrugs. 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.

Breazeal’s group at MIT is currently investigating ways in which computers can use “body language” to communi-cate with users and even encourage better posture. “RoCo” is a computer whose movable “head” is a monitor screen. Using a camera, RoCo can sense the user’s posture and emotional state.

Breazeal has also created “responsive” robots in new forms, and for venues beyond the laboratory. In 2003 the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York hosted a “cyberfloral installation” designed by Breazeal. It featured “flowers” of metal and silicone that exhibit behav-iors such as swaying and glowing in bright colors when a person’s hand comes near.

Besides earning her a master’s degree (1993) and doc-toral degree (2000) from MIT, Breazeal’s work has brought her considerable acclaim and numerous appearances in the media. She has been widely recognized as being a signifi-cant young inventor or innovator, such as by Time magazine and the Boston Business Forward. Breazeal is one of 100 “young innovators” featured in MIT’s Technology Review.