An MIT Media Lab project focuses on the cute rather than the intelligent:
Boxie looks kind of like Wall-E, or the “Bad Robot” logo of J.J. Abrams’ production company: basically just a big boxy head with wide-set eyes on wheels. Its computerized “brain” isn’t very sophisticated, so Boxie just wanders around somewhat helplessly, its cardboard head wobbling and its toddler-like voice plaintively calling out for attention, waiting for a human to come rescue it. Which humans inevitably do: The attraction to cuteness is written into our very genes.
