Well, as you know there is always a give-and-take process, a study on why babies smile concludes that they expect something in return of their smiles from their respective parents.

In order to known the reason behind why babies smile, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, designed a robot that had the ability to act like a baby. The robot observed 13 pairs of babies younger than four months of age and their mothers out of which 11 smiled on purpose.

The child robot that was designed to observe the infants and their behavior was the part of the new study. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the interaction of the child robot was done with the UC San Diego students.

The child robot was named ‘Diego-San’, which was inspired by the babies that it observed, and used to smile at random and bizarre manner.

The babies were compared to comedians, who do every possible thing to bring joy around them and create a cheerful environment, mentioned in the Union-Tribune’s piece.

Javier Movellan, UC San Diego psychologist and lead researcher, said the study is based on what exactly the babies need to smile. Movellan says interacting with his daughter when she was a kid made him wonder that she is trying to communicate with him. He says that kids are target-oriented.

Sometimes, an unusual laughter by the babies, for a longer period of time, was also observed, said Newser.

Dan Messigner, study co-author from the University of Miami, explained the interaction between baby-parent which was unknown before, according to CTV News.

"What makes our study unique is that previous approaches to studying infant-parent interaction essentially describe patterns, but we couldn't say what the mother or infant is trying to obtain in the interaction. Here we find that infants have their own goals in the interaction, even before four months of age”, said Messigner.

"Diego-San elicited lots of smiles, with little effort," according to the Union-Tribune. "Students only seemed to tune out the robot when it smiled in a random, unnatural manner."

"I used to wonder if my daughter was trying to communicate with me when she was an infant and smiled," Movellan said. "It might not have just been wishful thinking on my part. Babies are very goal-oriented."