Date: October 2017
Time Magazine (2017). Jibo named #1 in 25 Best Inventions of 2017
As a member of the Character AI team, my work focused on the social robot’s interactive behaviors and how it could maintain a consistent character and personality across all its skills and applications. Analogous to how smart phones have an OS layer that supports an app ecosystem, an intelligent agent has an interaction layer that supports a consistent user experience. But this isn’t just a new form of a UI, its a whole new interaction paradigm that is interpersonal, relational, and highly engaging.
One key differentiating factor of social robots like Jibo over standard devices is that its a technology that has presence and agency. Its a technology that people expect to act on its own and have its own robot-initiated behaviors that are driven by user-assistive goals. Something you would except from your personal assistant. At Jibo, I worked on developing a content delivery system that gave users what they wanted, when they needed it, and in a personalized way. My expertise is in developing interactive systems that is socially and emotionally aware of its environment and users, and my key contribution to the project was creating a sensor-fusion model to detect socially appropriate moments for Jibo to initiate proactive behaviors.
Jin Joo Lee 