To My Dear Parents , & To My Lovely Mahsa

Acknowledgement Although developing Aryan was my dissertation project, I had the advantage of having many people by my side without whom this wouldn't have been possible. Hereby, I would like to acknowledge each of their contributions in the process. Professor Cynthia Breazeal is the first person I owe my deepest appreciation to. She had a major role to get this project up and running. When I first saw her work on her robot, Kismet, I asked her to help me and despite her busy schedule she enthusiastically agreed to kindly guide me, a complete stranger, through this difficult process. Although very detail oriented and objective, she kept me highly motivated by providing positive feedbacks as well as constructive advice. My many thanks go to my fiancée, Mahsa Kamali, whose faith and moral support meant the world to me. She tolerated my long absences even on days when I didn't have time to call her on the phone. She believed in my project so deeply that she would overlook her own desire to be with me and instead made a priority of keeping me focused on my work. To top it all, she took a lot off my shoulders by preparing documents and photos as well as schematics, charts and diagrams. She has been my great inspiration throughout the way. In making of the parts I needed for Aryan it was Kourosh Bayat who assisted me deliver a high quality with minimum expense. Behnam Ghiassedin took the time consuming tasks off my shoulders after I had designed the blueprints of control boards and amplifiers. I am grateful for what both these friends did. I also thank my cousin, Bita Shakoory, who accepted to edit parts of my report to minimize the grammatical mistakes. She was eager to do this boring part of the job to make the literature more sensible in English language. It is of importance to mention Ali Omumi, who gave me a great deal of support at the beginning. I also bothered my good friend, Ali Parvini and used his equipments such as printer, scanner and camera frequently. years of undergraduate, he didn't hesitate to give me full support in coordinating and upholding seminars, workshops and competitions in addition to establishing Institute of Computer Engineering at the university. Accordingly in my dissertation project he and my supervisor, Mr. Katiraee kept faith in me and demonstrated maximum support, especially …