Alan poses with Leonardo at MIT's Media Lab

Two years ago Alan was present for the first public appearance of Leonardo, a robot co-designed by MIT's Cynthia Breazeal and the Hollywood special effects wizard Stan Winston. Leonardo's special talent is its cuteness, since it encourages the humans it encounters (including Alan) to want to interact with it. Since that first meeting, Leonardo has acquired the ability to learn from these interactions and, as it demonstrates, can now perform simple tasks on its own once it has been told how to do them.