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Engineering Human-Machine Relationships

Moderator: Barbara Liskov
Leslie Pack Kaelbling Rodney A. Brooks Martin Schmidt '83, PhD '88 Victor Zue ScD '76: May 23, 2003; Running Time: 1:31:55

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

If you feel inseparable from your laptop and cell phone today, just wait a few years: the connection between people and machines is about to get much, much closer. This theme underlay much of the panel discussion. Victor Zue’s computers can take subtle visual and conversational cues from a speaker, and respond appropriately (even switching languages at the drop of a hat!). Leslie Pack Kaelbling described the perfect office mate, the “Enduring Personal Cognitive Assistant,” which will someday remind you to press forward on a neglected project or to soothe the ruffled feathers of a snubbed colleague. Martin Schmidt’s lab is finding ways to plug the tiniest circuitry into a boot or a sneaker to harvest the body’s energy for lightweight battery power out in the field. And Rodney Brooks showcased Kismet, a robot who can babble like an appreciative baby and bat her eyes in response to compliments. He also showed a remarkable video of another invention: a prosthetic leg that understands how it’s being walked on and adapts. As a woman tries the leg out for the first time, she laughs with sheer delight.

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

About the Speakers

Moderator: Barbara Liskov

Institute Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Barbara Liskov has served at MIT since 1972. Previously, she worked at Mitre Corporation in computer science research and development. Liskov received her B.A. in mathematics from Stanford University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford in computer science.

Liskov was named one of the 50 most important women in science by Discover Magazine. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She won the 2008 Turing Award, and the IEEE 2004 John von Neumann Medal.

Leslie Pack Kaelbling

MIT Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Associate Director Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Rodney A. Brooks

Founder, Chairman and CTO, Heartland Robotics, Inc.
Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus)

Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) at MIT. He is a robotics entrepreneur and Founder, Chairman and CTO of Heartland Robotics, Inc. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991 - 2008) of iRobot Corp. Dr. Brooks is the former Director (1997 - 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He has published many papers in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life. Brooks is a Founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Martin Schmidt '83, PhD '88

Professor of Electrical Engineering Director, Microsystems Technology Laboratory

Victor Zue ScD '76

Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Co-Director, CSAIL

Victor Zue is the first holder of the Delta Electronics Chair endowed for senior researchers. His main research interest is in the development of spoken language interfaces to make human/computer interactions easier and more natural, and he has taught many courses and lectured extensively on this subject. Prior to 2001, he headed the Spoken Language Systems Group, which has pioneered the development of many systems that enable a user to interact with computers using multiple spoken languages (English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish).

Outside of MIT, Zue has consulted for many multinational corporations, and he has served on many planning, advisory, and review committees for the US Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Science and Engineering. In 1990, he became a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. In 1999, he received the DARPA Sustained Excellence Award. In 2002, he received the Speech Technology Magazine's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.