Cynthia Breazeal
| Cynthia Breazeal | |
|---|---|
Breazeal in 2010
|
|
| Born |
November 15, 1967 Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | University of California, Santa Barbara (B.S., EECS, 1989) MIT (S.M., 1993; Sc.D., 2000) |
| Occupation | computer scientist, professor |
| Known for | robotics |
Cynthia Lynn Breazeal (born November 15, 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the director of the Personal Robots Group (formerly the Robotic Life Group) at the MIT Media Laboratory. She is best known for her work in robotics where she is recognized as a pioneer of social robotics and human–robot interaction.
Cynthia Breazeal received her B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1989, her S.M. in 1993 and her Sc.D. in 2000 in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, both from MIT.
She developed the robot Kismet as a doctoral thesis looking into expressive social exchange between humans and humanoid robots. Now you can see Kismet at the MIT Museum where you can find some of the other robots Breazeal co-developed while a graduate student at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. Notable examples include the upper torso humanoid robot Cog and the insect-like robot Hannibal.
At the Media Lab, Breazeal continues to work on social interaction and socially situated learning between people and robots. Leonardo is another globally recognized robot (co-developed with Stan Winston Studio) that was developed as a successor to Kismet (recognized in 2006 by Wired Magazine as one of the "50 Best Robots Ever"). Leonardo was also used to investigate social cognition and Theory of Mind abilities on robots with application to human-robot collaboration, in addition to developing social learning abilities for robots such as imitation, tutelage, and social referencing. Nexi is the most recent robot in this tradition (awarded a TIME Magazine 50 Best Inventions of 2008). Nexi is a MDS robot (Mobile, Dexterous, Social) that combines rich social communication abilities with mobile dexterity to investigate more complex forms of human-robot teaming.
Other social robots developed in Breazeal's Personal Robots Group include Autom, a robot diet and exercise coach (the PhD thesis of Cory Kidd). It was found to be more effective than a computer counterpart in sustaining engagement and building trust and a working alliance with users. Autom is in the process of being commercialized (see Intuitive Automata). Breazeal's group has also explored expressive remote presence robots (for example, MeBot and Huggable). The physical social embodiment of the MeBot was found to elicit greater psychological involvement, engagement, and desire to cooperate over purely screen based video conferencing or a mobile screen.
...
Wikipedia