Before Stan Winston died in 2008, he worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Personal Robots Group on developing Leonardo, a charming, lifelike robot with computer-based artificial intelligence capabilities. Today, 16 years since he debuted, Leo resembles a toy. Or a Gremlin. He shrugs, reaches for things, gets excited, shy. You can believe, if for an instant, a robot can want. The Stan Winston School that Matt Winston started a decade ago teaches character creation in many forms — felt puppets, CGI — but he pictures the future of animatronics as ubiquitous, applied to sociable robots like Leonardo. “There’s major crossover in the skills it takes to create characters for entertainment and the aesthetically approachable robots of the future.” It will mean more than window dressing. “(Munch’s) didn’t have to pass muster with anyone but 5-year-olds, but they get one thing right — before human beings can get comfortable in the presence of robots, they are going to need us to care about them.”