Marvin Minsky commented, “My objection to Leonardo is that it’s just a trick. It doesn’t really have emotions. It just knows how to fool you into thinking it does. Cynthia’s an excellent engineer, but her work does not explain how emotions work.” Cynthia had felt Minsky had missed the point of her research. Her goal was to create robots that can cooperate with people and when Breazeal created Kismet she followed the following rules: 1. keep it simple-try for only one emotion at a time 2. Make the motions and transitions as fluid as possible 3. Believability is more important that realism 4. Don’t worry about precise lip-synching. Professor Brooks believed in keeping robot behavior simple as possible. The robot would have many smaller processors that could run at the same time and communicate with each other. Breazeal was an excellent programmer and she wrote software to help six legged robots Attila and Hannibal stay functional and work around failures in among 60 sensors and 19 degrees of free range of mechanical parts.

If Leonardo was not believable then people would be immediately turned off by the artificial gestures and motions and the machine would hold not captive audience. Leonardo had various sensors so it could see, hear, and touch objects around it. Leonard could respond to stimuli with appropriate movements, gestures, and expressions. Like Cog it could scan the room looking for people. Leonard could make humming noises. Interestingly, Breazeal added an innovative feature: long term memory. Leonard could remember how different people interacted with it creating an exciter or inhibiter poll algorithm. If the person visited again Leonard would smile and appear friendly. If the person had previously threatened Leonard, the robot would act defensive.

Cog had the ability to recognize to interact with human. Cog could recognize and identify person’s face and maintain eye contact. Cog could imitate action visualized, play a drum, juggle three balls, and play with a slinky. Breazeal was fascinated by a “take turn” game Cog played with her and thought about how babies learn about the world through their parents. Babies learn to communicate with their parents through socializing with their parents; parents begin talking with their babies even though the baby can not understand them. Parent sometime pause after speaking to their baby hoping the baby will respond. Over time the baby learns how and when too communicate with words. Both Kismet and Leonard search for social cues that can be used to engage human interaction.

Kismet had unusually large eyes, the ability to rotate its head, cartoon like ears and mouth, and the ability to blink. Nine of the fifteen computers controlled Kismet’s vision system and it quickly identified objects with bright colors, objects with skin tones, and movement of nearby objects. When it was time for Kismet to respond to some, it would raise it eyebrows and break off eye contact, just like humans do. The programs respond to pitch and tone without understanding any of the words. Breazal wanted to learn how ordinary people would respond to Kismet. She would bring research subjects to the lab, attach a microphone to them and instruct them with one simple instruction, “Speak to the robot.’ She was delighted to find that people responded to Kismets social cues.

Breazeal for the robotic life group with the goal to move robots beyond being view as only high-tech tools and become apart of daily life for millions of people. The student Sigraph project had too be “fun and fanciful”. The students suggested creating a robotic sea anemone which would interact with people. If a person walked near the glass encasing the robotic anemone it would move towards the terrarium glass; however, if the person made a sudden movement or loud noise the robot would withdraw and rattle like a snake. The robot used electronic servos too produce movement.