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Robotics is the expression of a drive towards human self-understanding that spans philosophy, science, and even performance art, says Cynthia Breazeal, Director of the Personal Robots Group at MIT‘s Media Lab –and a little Star Wars won’t hurt either.   

“Robotics is part of a profound human quest to reflect upon what it means to be human and what it will mean to be human in the future,” Breazeal told the audience at the third of this year’s Science Week lectures in The Science Gallery Dublin.

“So, robotics is a way of investigating ourselves. It’s a scientific pursuit, but it’s also a philosophical pursuit,” says Breazeal.   

Breazeal’s research draws on insights from cognitive psychology to develop robots that can interact with humans, in human ways.

Breazeal led the team that developed KISMET (shown here), a robot that can participate in social interaction with humans using human cues to generate its own set of facial expressions.

On the Leonardo project (main pic, and video below), Breazeal’s team drew on developmental psychology to mimic the way an infant learns in social situations.

It’s all part of Breazeal’s mission “to challenge our notions of what machines are and what they mean” which means seeing robots as colleagues and social partners rather than dumb machines.

So where does Star Wars come in?

Breazeal was inspired to get into robotics by the Star Wars movie.

“When I was ten years old, I saw Star Wars and fell in love with C3PO and R2D2. These were robots with character. They had a relationship with each other. They were more like friends than tools,” says Breazeal.

Since then, her dream has come full circle. First, she worked as a post-production consultant on Spielberg’s bot epic A.I., but, best of all –and you can tell by the glint of excitement in her eye when she tells the story, that this really is best of all– she met Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C3PO.

“He’s the only actor to appear in all the Star Wars movies. He’s been in every single one,” says Breazeal, every inch the excited ten year old again.

Be sure to check back next week, when we’ll post a link to Breazeal’s full lecture. You’ll find out that men and women react to robots in very different ways, how robots helped some Bostonites to lose weight, and just what “robot persuasiveness” might mean.