Graduate students to display robots at annual open house

Robots have always been seen as objects of science fiction or as distant-future technology. Even now, few robots exist, but the chance to see one comes Friday.

The Cognitive Science Robotics groups are hosting an open house from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday in the west wing of Eigenmann Hall on the eighth floor. Robots will attend and people can go from room to room to observe demonstrations and interact with them.

Randall Beer, one of the coordinators for the event, said he wants people to come and see what robotics is all about.

“We want to let people know we’re on campus,” he said.  

A couple hundred people attended the open house last year, Beer said.

“It doesn’t take much to get people to come,” he said.

Children in particular are interested in the various robots the department has, Beer said.

One group uses robots to test embodied cognitive science and how environment plays a role in perception. The robots are actually research projects on cognitive science created by graduate students.

The other group, lead by Matthias Scheutz, concentrates its studies on “the different aspects of human/robot interaction,” said Paul Schermerhorn, who works with Scheutz.

The robots Scheutz’s group will present have facial expressions and gesture recognition. Cameras are embedded in their eyes so they can see and respond to people around them.

“They’re simulations of processes that are in some way lifelike,” Schermerhorn said.
Zach Haga will present CRAMER, which he said is the result of “trying to obtain more life-like gestures” for robots. Haga said CRAMER has several expressions, such as moving his eyeballs and smiling.

“We use him as a means of seeing how people interact with robots,” Haga said. “We want to elicit emotion via expression.”

CRAMER won’t be the only robot there. One robot with a mechanical voice tract, vocal cords and jaws will make sounds, Beer said. This is to demonstrate “speech perception and production.”

Another robot, which is the result of experiments about hand-eye coordination, will have arms and eyes that can move.

The robots also have the ability to walk.

“It’s very interesting stuff,” Schermerhorn said. “Many people don’t know this kind of thing is happening here.”