Now, computer scientists from the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego have used machine learning to enable the robot to learn expressions on its own.

The researchers conducted a series of laboratory experiments with groups of various sizes and developed a mathematical model of the intuitive learning process.

I did my post-doc at the N.I.H., in the laboratory of Ed Evarts, who’d developed a technique for studying single brain cells and learning how their activities related to behavior.