Connected Health Conference 2018 Keynote Series: Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, Pioneer Of Social Robotics And Human Robot Interaction

By AIT News Desk On Aug 9, 2018

Balancing Technology and the Human Element – October 17-19, Boston, MA

The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance), a HIMSS innovation company, today announced that Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a keynote speaker confirmed to take the main stage at the 10th annual Connected Health Conference. She founded and directs the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, and is also founder and Chief Scientist of Jibo, Inc.

Dr. Breazeal is famous for her robots, which are designed to demonstrate seemingly emotional as well as physical reactions to the world around them. Her earliest work includes a ‘cyberfloral installation’ that featured robotic flowers that swayed when a human hand was near and glowed in bright colors. In 1997, she started work on developing a robot that could learn from people for her doctorial thesis. That concept led to Kismet, an affective robot which she created to provoke the kind of interactions a human adult and a baby might have.

Today, Dr. Breazeal’s research focuses on developing the principles, techniques, and technologies for personal robots that are socially intelligent, interact and communicate with people in human-centric terms, work with humans as peers, and learn from people as an apprentice. Her recent work investigates the impact of social robots on helping people of all ages to achieve personal goals that contribute to quality of life in domains such as physical performance, learning/education, health, and family communication and play over distance.

At Jibo, Inc., Dr. Breazeal brings the technologies, design insights, and user experience of social robots to create the world’s first family robot. Jibo, a TIME Magazine Best Inventions of 2017, is designed to help busy families communicate, coordinate and connect with loved ones with greater ease, efficacy, and delight. As an open platform, Jibo enables third party developers to bring the humanized engagement and emotional lift of social robots to their apps, content and services.

She authored the book Designing Sociable Robots, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences on the topics of Autonomous Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Human Robot Interaction, and Robot Learning. She received her B.S. (1989) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Breazeal did her graduate work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and received her M.S. (1993) and Sc.D. (2000) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

PCHAlliance has created an unmatched leadership event, bringing together the industry’s two leading events — the Connected Health Conference (formerly the mHealth Summit) and the Partners Connected Health Symposium. This year’s theme, Balancing Technology and the Human Element, will showcase forward-thinking approaches and technologies that are driving integration of connected health into consumer health and care delivery. The 10th annual Connected Health Conference will take place October 17-19 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.