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170 Socially Intelligent Agents3.1 A toy and educational toolAn important motivation behind the creation of the first Robota doll was tomake it an appealing show-case of Artificial Intelligence techniques. This wishis now realized thanks to the museum La cité des sciences et de l’industrie 9 ,which will be presenting it from November 2001 to March 2003.I also wished to create a cute, but interesting toy robot. In order to achievethis, I provided the robot with multimedia type of interactions. In spring 1998,tests with children of 5 and 6 years old showed the potential of the system asa game for children [3]. The children showed pleasure when the robot reactedto their movements. The robot would respond to the children touching specificparts of its body, by making small movements or little noises. It would mimicthe child’s head and arm movements. Because imitation is a game that youngchildren like to play with each other and their parents, it was easy for themto understand that they could interact with the robot in this way. The childrenmanaged to teach the robot some words part of their every-day vocabulary (e.g.food, hello, no) and showed satisfaction when the robot would speak the wordsback.Another important wish was that the robot would be useful. In this spirit,I have sought collaboration with educators and clinicians. One key feature ofthe robot as an educational tool is that the level of complexity of the game withRobota can be varied. One can restrict oneself to only interact with the built-inbehaviors of the robot (a baby-like robot). The learning game can be restrictedto learning only music patterns (using the musical keyboard), dance patterns,or speech.This lead to the idea of using the game with Robota (by exploiting the differentdegrees of complexity) to train and possibly test (in the case of retardedchildren and, e.g., for evaluating the deepness of autism) the child’s motorand linguistic competences. In October 1999, as part of Kerstin Dautenhahn’sAurora project 10 , the first prototype of Robota was tested at Radlett LodgeSchool with a group of children with autism. Although the interactions werenot formally documented, observations showed that the children showed greatinterest in the robot. Consistent with general assumptions about autism, theyshowed interest in details of the robot (e.g. eyes, cables that were visible etc.).In collaboration with Kerstin Dautenhahn, further tests will be carried out toevaluate the possible use of the robot in her projects.Current collaboration with Sharon Demuth, clinician, and Yvette Pena, directorof the USC premature infant clinic (Los Angeles) conducts pilot studiesto evaluate the use of the robot with premature children. The idea there is thatrobot would serve as an incentive for the child to perform its daily necessaryexercises, in order to overcome its motor weaknesses, as well as its verbaldelay.