Since we started meetings this Spring 2023 semester, RoboLab conversations have happened four times, over four consecutive weeks. It’s exciting to see that students have been interested and energized to come to our discussions on a purely voluntary, extra-curricular basis to geek out and explore robot-human interaction. Our Schedule shows the range of topics we have been exploring, but it doesn’t do justice to energy that our discussions have seen. I think we have started “a thing” at Bucknell.
We have seen people demonstrate curiosity when Sean O’Connor introduced the group to the NAO6 robot technical aspects. Sean is in the fourth of a string of independent studies exploring this platform, which has many capabilities, but which is plagued by the lack of accurate, stable documentation and also by the lack of resources that provide a systematic, gentle introduction to the programming and the use of some of the robots most exciting features. Jules Ward was the trailblazer in our group who worked on developing software to stream video and audio from the robot to a laptop. Sean is building on that and also developing a new accessory for the robot to capture and stream high-resolution video at better frame rates.
We started going beyond the system side of HRI with Reva Sharma and Jules Ward’s discussion on the creation of robot cafés in Japan. In the following week, Wera Kyaw Kyaw and Ibrahim Tahir led a discussion on how robots have been gendered and on the dangers of this practice. In our fifth meeting, we will explore how trust can positively or negatively affect the relationships between humans and robots.
Even for the short stint we have had this semester, the energy in this group has been exciting. We have had 16 students attend one or more meetings with a new one likely to join in our fifth week. The survey I have sent around has attracted the attention of another five students interested in participating in the fall. It is fair to say from what we have seen so far that RoboLab is growing roots at Bucknell and I hope that it will also bear fruit in the near future. I can almost smell our topics inspiring a new Computer Science elective coming down the pike. A big ‘Ray to all who are bringing so much energy to RoboLab!