Creating robots of the future

December 23, 2003 | Source: Boston Globe

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are working on ways to let robots interact emotionally with humans.

But in the Mall at Chestnut Hill, humans already are interacting emotionally with robots. A small crowd of shoppers gathers around a pair of bright red and blue Boxing Robots in the window of the Sharper Image….

A couple of aisles down, a sales clerk is showing off the latest model of iRobot’s Roomba floor vacuum cleaner ….

A colleague is using a wireless remote to direct RoboScout, a 2-foot-high, egg-shaped robot with bulging pink eyes, out the door into the mall ….