Interviews with Cynthia Breazeal

ABSTRACT

Interviews with Cynthia Breazeal and Karlheinz Brandenburg&br;September 10, 2003 and July 22, 2004

Prof. Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, Director of the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab, and Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, inventor of MP3, have graciously appeared on camera for interviews and joined the ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine's editorial board. Cynthia and Karlheinz are two of the nicest people to talk to and work with. Cynthia talks about her sociable robot Kismet, her role in Steven Spielberg's movie "Artificial Intelligence: AI," and the future of robotics. Karlheinz shares with us the history of MP3, the new spatial audio technology called Wave Field Synthesis, and other fascinating research at the Fraunhofer Institute. The video clips of the interviews are available at http://www.acm.org/pubs/cie.html

Dr. Cynthia Breazeal directs the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab. She is internationally known for seamlessly blending scientific theories, artistic insights, and engineering principles to create compelling robotic creatures that have a lively and compelling social presence to those who interact with them. Her current research extends these themes in the area of human-robot relations to create cooperative and capable robots that can work and learn in partnership with people. Her research program strives to revolutionize the art and science of human-robot interaction and cooperation - to develop robots that engage us as helpful partners that will ultimately play an valuable, rewarding, and unprecedented role in the everyday lives or ordinary people. More information can be found at http://web.media.mit.edu/~cynthiab/

Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg manages The Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology founded in January 2004. He is well known for his work on digital audio coding and perceptual measurement techniques. He received the German Future Award for the development and commercialization of the MP3 music format at the Erlangen based Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits together with his colleagues Harald Popp and Bernhard Grill in 2000. He is also a full professor and the director of the Institute for Media Technology at Ilmenau Technical University. His current research includes the IOSONO Wave Field Synthesis, audio metadata technologies, and audio applications for specific technological demands. More information can be found at http://www.idmt.fraunhofer.de/presse/textarchiv/vita_brandenburg.pdf