Since the January 2013 release of the first news, photos and video clips about the experimental Diego robot (dubbed Diego-san, for his roots in San Diego), the robotic toddler has amassed a wealth of news, press clips and TV news coverage, from Forbes and Slate to Fox News and Popular Science.
In 2009, NSF funded a 5-year project on "Developing Social Robots." Dozens of publications later, the project has yielded important advances in software and hardware, including development of the robotic one-year-old known as Diego.
The Diego project is based in the Machine Perception Laboratory at UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute. MPLab focuses on systems that perceive and interact with humans in real time using natural communication channels, including visual, auditory, tactile and other information.