Cynthia Breazeal is associate professor at the MIT Media Lab where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group. She is a pioneer of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction.  

Dr. Breazeal has authored the book "Designing Sociable Robots" and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences on the topics of autonomous robotics,  artificial intelligence, human robot interaction, and robot learning. Her research program develops personal robots with human-like interpersonal skills that enable them to work and learn collaboratively with people --- with application to entertainment, distance learning, quality of life, and health goals.

More recent work explores the intersection of social robots and interactive characters in transmedia storytelling. She is recognized as a prominent young innovator by the National Academy of Engineering's Gilbreth Lecture Award, Technology Review's TR35 Award, and TIME magazine's Best Inventions of 2008, and honored as finalist in the National Design Awards in Communication. She received her ScD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000.

Title: The Social Side of Robotics

Abstract

The emerging field of Human-Robot Interaction is undergoing rapid growth, motivated by important societal challenges facing the general public. In this talk, I highlight a number of provocative research findings that illuminate the social attributes of personal robots. This new "breed" of social robot interacts with people in an interpersonal way, more as a partner rather than as a tool, and opens new applications for socially intelligent machines in the future.  I illustrate these possibilities by highlighting a number of research projects from my group at the MIT Media Lab. An important goal of this work is to use socially interactive robots as a scientific tool to understand human behavior, to design machines that can engage us on social and emotional levels, and to use these insights to create robotic technologies that can enhance human performance and quality of life with specific applications in healthcare, education, entertainment, and telecommunication.