Kismet

About: Kismet is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 76 publications have been published within this topic receiving 3821 citations.

Designing Sociable Robots

Abstract: From the Publisher: Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because the most successful sociable robots will share our social characteristics, the effort to make sociable robots is also a means for exploring human social intelligence and even what it means to be human. Breazeal defines the key components of social intelligence for these machines and offers a framework and set of design issues for their realization. Much of the book focuses on a nascent sociable robot she designed named Kismet. Breazeal offers a concrete implementation for Kismet, incorporating insights from the scientific study of animals and people, as well as from artistic disciplines such as classical animation. This blending of science, engineering, and art creates a lifelike quality that encourages people to treat Kismet as a social creature rather than just a machine. The book includes a CD-ROM that shows Kismet in action.

Sociable machines: expressive social exchange between humans and robots

Abstract: : Sociable humanoid robots are natural and intuitive for people to communicate with and to teach. The author presents recent advances in building an autonomous humanoid robot, named "Kismet," that can engage humans in expressive social interaction. She outlines a set of design issues and a framework that she has found to be of particular importance for sociable robots. Having a human-in-the-loop places significant social constraints on how the robot aesthetically appears, how its sensors are configured, its quality of movement, and its behavior. Inspired by infant social development, psychology, ethology, and evolutionary perspectives, this work integrates theories and concepts from these diverse viewpoints to enable Kismet to enter into natural and intuitive social interaction with a human caregiver, reminiscent of parent-infant exchanges. Kismet perceives a variety of natural social cues from visual and auditory channels, and delivers social signals to people through gaze direction, facial expressions, body posture, and vocalizations. The author presents the implementation of Kismet's social competencies and evaluates each with respect to the following: (1) the ability of naive subjects to read and interpret the robot's social cues; (2) the robot's ability to perceive and appropriately respond to naturally offered social cues; (3) the robot's ability to elicit interaction scenarios that afford rich learning potential; and (4) how this produces a rich, flexible, dynamic interaction that is physical, affective, and social. Numerous studies with naive human subjects are described that provide the data upon which the author bases her evaluations.

Engineering Human Cooperation

Abstract: In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet.

The Drosophila kismet gene is related to chromatin-remodeling factors and is required for both segmentation and segment identity.

Abstract: The Drosophila kismet gene was identified in a screen for dominant suppressors of Polycomb, a repressor of homeotic genes. Here we show that kismet mutations suppress the Polycomb mutant phenotype by blocking the ectopic transcription of homeotic genes. Loss of zygotic kismet function causes homeotic transformations similar to those associated with loss-of-function mutations in the homeotic genes Sex combs reduced and Abdominal-B. kismet is also required for proper larval body segmentation. Loss of maternal kismet function causes segmentation defects similar to those caused by mutations in the pair-rule gene even-skipped. The kismet gene encodes several large nuclear proteins that are ubiquitously expressed along the anterior-posterior axis. The Kismet proteins contain a domain conserved in the trithorax group protein Brahma and related chromatin-remodeling factors, providing further evidence that alterations in chromatin structure are required to maintain the spatially restricted patterns of homeotic gene transcription.