The object
Cynthia Breazeal designed Kismet, an expressive social robot whose camera, motors and animated face responded to human interaction. The physical robot helped define social robotics as an engineering field and influenced later companion and educational robots built to communicate naturally with people.
What Cynthia did
Designed Kismet, the expressive robotic head that used cameras, motors and facial features to model social interaction.
Why it matters
Kismet is a canonical museum and research example of social robotics, while Breazeal's subsequent Jibo programme brought the concept into consumer companion hardware.
Living-status check
MIT's current 2026 Media Lab profile lists Breazeal as professor, dean for digital learning and director of the Personal Robots Group, positive evidence she was alive in 2026.