Kismet is a robot head, made in the 1990s at MIT by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal. It’s an example of affective computing – a study of machines and systems which could recognise, process, and simulate human affects. The machine reponds to human behaviour. It can get annoyed, or be happy. The behaviour towards the robot tends to mimic one that humans show towards children. Cooing, exaggerated expressions, and baby talk. The robot is purposefully made to reflect a behaviour of an infant. A baby uses expressions and cries to manipulate the adults to fulfil its desires, Kismet does a similar thing, its goal being to learn as much from human expressions as possible.
“We anthropomorphize all kinds of things, our pets, our cars, our computers. Whenever we have to engage something in an intimate, interpersonal way, we very naturally fall into this intentional mode. People get angry at their cars for making them late for work, and of course they know that the car is just being a car, but it’s natural for them to relate to something, to interact in a personal way.” – Dr. Cynthia Breazeal
Developing androids challenges humans’ “last refuge of specialness. At first we thought the Earth was the center of the universe. And then there was Darwin. And then Crick and Watson showed that we’re all made from the same DNA, essentially. And they said that a computer couldn’t play chess, and when a computer could play chess, they said it couldn’t feel. We’re trying to push on that boundary. That’s all that’s sort of left to us, all there is to be special about. And so we’re trying to see if we can make a machine that has emotions. We don’t know exactly how to do it, but we’re trying to do it.” – Rodney Brooks, professor at MIT
Kismet has eyes, eyebrows, lips and ears, which helps it to express its simulated ’emotions’. Robot can ‘see’ thanks to four cameras, and a microphone which helps it ‘hear’. There are four different operating systems, nine computers are computing only the vision, one computer processes speech signal, and one computer which makes robot vocalise.
Sources:
Catherine M.B. 
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