Autism and artificial intelligence: Visiting scholar probes human-robot interaction

Lundy Lewis, an academic and researcher in artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction, is watching a pair of six year-old boys playing with social robots in the gym at CHEO's site for autism in Kanata. Griffin and James Beck are twins. The robot they're interacting with is called Jibo, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jibo has no arms or legs and only two joints, one which approximates a neck and another a waist. Despite this, Jibo can pack a lot of emotion into his rotund body. Equipped with facial recognition and a touch screen, Jibo turns his head towards people.