Heart of a New Machine

by Kim Krieger IEEE Spectrum, July 2006 The little robot's big round eyes glow a happy green, and its antennae lean forward. "Hello, I'm Quasi!" it chirps to a small crowd at an exhibition held this past fall at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. "What's your name?" While most robots are designed to serve a single dull, utilitarian function, Quasi's reason for being is charm. The machine's creators, all graduate students at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, wanted to build a captivating character that would go well beyond the standard animatronic amusement park figures that spew out canned patter to bored preschoolers. They wanted to build a robot that would make people forget it's a robot. Read more