会笑会学习有礼貌：家用机器人Jibo

    Jibo可以实现一些功能，比如给小孩子讲故事、利用面部识别技术抓拍家庭照片等等。它也可以用Skype打电话，另外某些需要用手机完成的通讯也可以通过他来完成。Jibo是为家庭设计的，它可以放在桌子或工作台上。在一段展示视频中，当一个男人下班回家时，Jibo立即向他问好，然后问他需要不需要叫中餐外卖。在另一幕中，一个女人正在揉面。这时Jibo提醒她，她的女儿很快要来接她外出购物。那个女人回答道：“谢谢你，Jibo。”和《摩登家庭》里简•杰特森对Rosie所说的话没什么区别。

    Jibo可以被视为目前的“远程呈现”机器人的下一步发展方向。所谓的“远程呈现”机器人就是把一台手机或平板电脑（也就是机器人的“大脑”）连接到一个移动基座上。比如，Romo无非就是给你的手机安装了一个橡胶“坦克底盘”，而且它还需要另一台平板或手机作为遥控器。Ubooly则是一款儿童玩具，父母可以把他们的手机插到毛绒玩具的肚子里，让它陪孩子玩。远程呈现机器人Double，本质上就是把iPad放在一辆赛格威两轮车(Segway)上面，让身处异地的人们觉得他们亲自参加会议或在办公室走来走去。它有点像英剧《超级麦克斯》(Max Headroom)里的主人公，但老实说，实际使用时，它看起来真是蠢萌蠢萌的。

    Jibo也可以和智能手机一起工作，但布雷西亚决定给予它一个属于自己的大脑，而不是完全依赖智能手机。她认为智能手机会限制它的能力。事实证明，人们并不喜欢把自己的手机放在一个机器人身上，而是喜欢一直把手机拿在手上。

    目前还不知道，这究竟是不是一个明智的决定，这样做能否给Jibo带来好销量。但对这个问题最有发言权的人，可能还是Jibo的发明者布雷西亚。早在麻省理工学院(MIT)读书时，布雷西亚就把她的整个职业生涯奉献给了社交型机器人。她最初不明白为什么美国国家航空航天局（NASA）可以把机器人送上火星，却不能把机器人送进地球上的千家万户。后来她究其根源，觉得这是因为机器人在设计上缺乏社交性的缘故。后来布雷西亚设计了她的第一款专门针对小孩子的社交机器人Kismet。从那时起，她发表了不计其数的关于社交型机器人的论文。2010年，她还在TED大会上针对这个课题发表了一篇演讲。她认为，人们会像跟真人沟通一样与仿人型机器人进行交流。而能够传递感性信号的机器人，可以提高人们的代入感、参与感和协作性，这是缺少人性化因素的工作机器人所做不到的。

    根据国际机器人联合会（International Federation of Robotics）统计，2012年，全球共售出大约300万台家用和个人用途的服务型机器人，销售额达12亿美元。该组织预测称，到2016年，全球将卖出2200万台机器人。

    布雷西亚表示，Jibo有意地没有设计成人的外型。Jibo的目标是创建她所谓的“拟人体验”，因为她认为：“那才是让人之所以成为人的东西。”试图模仿人类外观的机器人不免科幻色彩太浓了。

    Jibo can perform a number of functions. He can tell children’s stories and snap family photos using face recognition. He can place Skype calls and handle communications for which you would normally use a phone. Jibo is meant to stay in the home, perched on a table or countertop, and a demo video shows him greeting a single man when he comes home from work and offering to order Chinese takeout. In another scene, Jibo is hanging out while a woman kneads bread. He chimes in to remind her that her daughter is picking her up soon. “Thanks, Jibo,” the woman responds, not unlike Jane Jetson talking to Rosie.

    Jibo can be considered the next logical step past today’s “telepresence” robots, which work only by connecting a smartphone or tablet—a brain, if you will—to a mobile base. For example, Romo augments your cell phone with rubber tank treads, though it requires a tablet or another phone to serve as a remote controller. Ubooly is a plush children’s toy in which parents can insert their cell phone for playtime. The Double telepresence robot, essentially an iPad on top of a Segway, allows people to feel physically present in meetings and move around the office when they’re working remotely. It’s a bit like Max Headroom on a broomstick and, to be frank, a little silly in practice.

    Jibo works with smartphones, but Breazeal chose to give the robot its own brain, rather than rely on a smartphone. The smartphone would have limited the robot’s capabilities, she says. As it turns out, people don’t like to put their phones into a robot anyway. They prefer to keep it on hand, Breazeal says.

    Whether that can make a difference—or translate to sales of in-home robots—is up for debate, but if anyone can figure this out, it’s Jibo’s inventor. Breazeal has dedicated her career to social robots, starting as a grad student at M.I.T. When she was younger, she didn’t understand why NASA was sending robots to Mars but they still hadn’t arrived in people’s homes. It’s because those robots weren’t designed to be social, she reasoned. Breazeal went on to build the first a social robot, which was called Kismet and intended for children. She has since published numerous studies on social robotics and in 2010 delivered a TED talk on the subject. People respond to human-like robots the same way they respond to people, she argued, and robots with the ability to convey expression increase empathy, engagement, and collaboration among people in a way that a robot with a flat demeanor cannot.

    An estimated 3 million service robots, which are intended for personal and domestic use, were sold in 2012, according to the International Federation of Robotics, representing sales of $1.2 billion. The IFR predicts 22 million robots to be sold through 2016.

    Jibo is purposely designed to not resemble a human, Breazeal says. The goal is to create what she calls a humanized experience, “because that’s what empowers people,” she says. Robots that try to look like human beings end up being a little too science fiction.