Cute or creepy, this robot helped researchers figure out why babies smile

Whether you think it's creepy or cute, there is no denying that Diego-san, a toddler-like robot developed at the Qualcomm Institute here at UC San Diego, became a media darling this past week. The robot was part of a study where researchers tried to figure out why babies smile.
They programmed Diego-san to behave like the babies they studied and had him interact with undergraduate students. The study is part of an effort funded by the National Science Foundation to use robots to better understand human development. It gives developmental psychologists a tool for studying non-verbal children and adults, such as those with autism.
But for a lot of media outlets, it was all about the robot. IEEE Spectrum generously described Diego-san as "slightly uncanny." Other outlets were less charitable. Engadget,   the San Diego Union-Tribune and New York Magazine found the robot creepy. Motherboard was probably the most aggravated and called Diego-san horrifying.
Below is a video of the robot in action so you can make up your mind for yourself.
The full press release about the study is here.
Javier Movellan, one of the study's co-authors, will present related work on Oct. 30 at the Contextual Robotics Forum here at the Jacobs School.

This UC San Diego researcher has had a busy week

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It's been a busy week for Marni Bartlett, a researcher at the Institute for Neural Computation here at UC San Diego. She was at a conference in Orlando, Fla., when ABC News called with an interview request. Bartlett was happy to oblige and jumped into a taxi to head out to the network's local affiliate to shoot an on-camera interview.
You can watch the resulting segment here . 
What had very likely gotten the network's attention was a story about Bartlett's research in The New York Times' Science Section April 29. The story explains how Bartlett and colleagues in the Machine Perception Lab, which is housed at Calit2, have developed a software toolbox that is able to tell whether someone is faking pain better than human observers. You can read more about the research here.
Then you can figure out how good you are a spotting people who are faking pain by taking this New York Times quiz. 
Bartlett and colleagues are getting some of these technologies ready for commercialization through a start up they launched last year, Emotient.