Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, published a paper in PLoS ONE on Sept. 23 that indicates that babies intentionally smile to make the mother or the caregiver smile.

The paper explains that during the smile-time of the mother / caregiver and the babies, the babies smile on purpose enough to make the mother or the caregiver smile.

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According to IEEE Spectrum, toddlers of four months and younger age cannot use gestures to influence the action of others unlike the older infants of eight months to one year of age. However, the younger toddlers smile a lot and this made the scientists question "Do the babies deliberately smile to form a means of interaction?"

The study involved three infant-mother pair volunteers, with the infants of one to four months of age. Researchers carefully observed the interaction between the mother and the infant and determined four goals the mother-infant pair tries to achieve: maximizing the time of simultaneous smiling, maximizing mother smiling, maximizing infant smiling, and nobody smiling.

On statistically analyzing facts the researchers were able to conclude that probability goal for the mother was to maximize the smile time for both the mother and the infant (about 70%), while the infants were more likely to be trying to maximize mother-only smiling (about 80%).

The researchers then employed the toddler robot, whose face was built by Hanson Robotics, with 27 moving parts. Its software aims to instruct the robot to move and communicate like a one-year-old child.

The robot was made to interact with the university students who acted as its caregiver. The robot was able to read the caregiver's expression to smile enough at the right time to get the caregiver to smile.

Movellan, a researcher in the University of Machine Perception Lab said to The San Diego Union Tribune, "It almost felt like the robot was alive."

Although researchers could throw light on the infant's goal-oriented smile, the reason why they behave that way still remains a mystery.

TagsBaby Robot, Toddler Robot, Babies Smile On Purpose, Hanson Robotics