Rosalind W. Picard

"Robot bodies, like human bodies, can encounter problems that could use some forms of sentic modulation. I visited a major research laboratory where I was shown a mobile robot, and a demonstration of how well it could navigate by itself around the building. Suddenly the robot stopped in its tracks. There followed a fair amount of anxiety among its makers while they tried to figure out why it failed. It was not until much later that they determined its buffers had overfilled, a very simple problem. In fact, an analogous problem happens to humans when overwhelmed with too much information. A human will appear confused, or her eyes may glaze over, and she may be unable to move mentally beyond the present point." (p. 73)