Institute for Personal Robots in Education Blog blogs

ACM SIGCSE2008-Portland, OR Report

Deepak Kumar — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:49:07 -0400

We just returned from ACM SIGCSE-2008 which was held in rainy and gloomy Portland, OR. Nice city though, despite the weather and most of us from IPRE were just too busy fielding interest from the 1400+ attendees.

IPRE had a booth in the Exibhition Hall which was continuously staffed by the bulk of the IPRE team. The conference also coincided with the official launch of the first IPRE Kit and also an announcement regarding two summer workshops we will be hosting. Needless to say, we were thrilled to have received numerous orders within 24 hours of the launch. It kind of generated the euphoria that many dot-commers experience when a site goes online.

iQue: Is it Really All that Smart?

Natasha Eilbert — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:35:20 -0500

iQue robot by Toy Quest (image from http://www.toyquest.com/ique/index.html)

Its manufacturers, Toy Quest, call it the “world’s smartest robot”. Indeed, the speaking iQue robot on wheels has a superb memory and fact recall. Specifically, iQue knows the entire Meriam-Webster student edition dictionary, thousands of historical and other facts, and can even learn and remember information about its beloved owner. But does that really make iQue smart?

IQue’s marketers claim that it will become “your new best friend”, which seems a far reach. It’s entertaining that it can speak to you, ask you questions, and remember facts about you. Yet you cannot exactly have any real type of communication with the iQue – you must type all responses to its questions in a remote control keypad, and you cannot ask it questions about itself. I find Pleo, which cannot form human words, a better companion since it can interact with you. You can watch it develop as a live being would. It reacts when you play tug-of-war with it over its plastic “leaf”, tugging playfully at the leaf and panting, and it yelps angrily when you hold it up by its tail. In short, it can communicate non-verbally with you in a much more natural way than the iQue can.

A Dinosaur Robot

Natasha Eilbert — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:08:20 -0500

She’s green and tan, with big curious blue eyes and scaly skin. She’s about as large as a little cat. And as we speak, she’s munching vigorously on her green and yellow plant leaf under my desk. Presently, she’s done eating and she’s staring across the room and up at the ‘ceiling’ (the underside of my desk), yelping and – even walking! One rubbery hoofed paw after the other.

Is a robot car in your future?

Deepak Kumar — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:26:35 -0500

Imagine this:

You get ready to go to work in the morning, go into your garage, open the door, pick up the newspaper from the driveway, get in the car, and say:

"Take me to work."

The car backs out of your driveway, on the road and heads toward work. You're sitting in the back seat (no driver in front!) reading the paper.

On the STOP sign near your block, you say:

"Stop by the Starbucks on the way"

The car goes into a Starbucks, you go in, get your favorite latte, hop back in, and off you go!

Couple weeks back I went over to U-Penn to watch the DARPA Urban Challenge Race being live webcast from Victorville, CA. There were about 60-70 people in the room (we had to move to a bigger room!) watching the events unfold. Lots of loud cheering each time Penn's entry (Little Ben) was shown on the screen. 5-10 minutes into the race, Little Ben ran into a snag: it just came to a halt trying to take a left turn onto a major road. DARPA had to stop all the other cars for 5-10 minutes. The commentators wondered out loud if that was the end of Little Ben. Half the people in the room walked out dejected.

Robots killing people

Doug Blank — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:22:24 -0400

In a recent article in GOOD magazine, Chris Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheek-sent-me-hi") noted:

Among the many changes in U.S. policy after 9/11 was one that went unnoticed by everyone except a few geeks: The military quietly reversed its longstanding position on the role of robots in battlefields, and now embraces the idea of autonomous killing machines. There was no outcry from the academics who study robotics—indeed, with few exceptions they lined up to help, developing new technologies for intelligent navigation, locomotion, and coordination. At my own institute, an enormous space is being out-fitted to coordinate robotic flying, swimming, and marching units in preparation for some future Normandy.

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Researchers study software gender gap

Doug Blank — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 09:34:20 -0400

Two computer scientists have found an interesting difference between how men and women use software. From an MSNBC report:

Laura Beckwith, a new computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University, and her adviser, Margaret Burnett, specialize in studying the way people use computers to solve everyday problems — like adding formulas to spreadsheets, animation to Web sites and styles to word processing documents.

A couple of years ago, they stumbled upon an intriguing tidbit: Men, it seemed, were more likely than women to use advanced software features, specifically ones that help users find and fix errors. Programmers call this "debugging," and it's a crucial step in building programs that work.

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Robot Conflict

Doug Blank — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:16:12 -0400

In the past, the Franklin Institute has invited us here at Bryn Mawr College to participate in demonstrations of our interesting robotics projects. We have always been very happy to take a group of robots on a nice Saturday morning in the Fall and have some fun showing kids of all ages our toys, er, I mean, "research opportunities."

However, this year I am hesitating. This year, the FI is bundling their robot demonstrations with an event called Robot Conflict. They describe it this way:

A Talk on the Philosophy of Computer Science

Doug Blank — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:15:06 -0400

Bryn Mawr College Department of Philosophy, Department of Computer Science, The Center for Science in Society, and the Delaware Valley Distinguished Lecture Series in Computer Science presents:

William J. Rapaport
University at Buffalo

Title: Philosophy of Computer Science

William J. Rapaport is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, an affiliated faculty member in the Departments of Philosophy and of Linguistics, and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science, all at State University of New York at Buffalo. His research interests are in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, knowledge representation and reasoning, contextual vocabulary acquisition, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, critical thinking, and cognitive development. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

IPRE wins its first award!

Stewart Tansley — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:48:19 -0400

The IPRE team was both thrilled and honored to be awarded last month (July) the “Technical Innovation Award for Educational Impact” at the AAAI-07 Sixteenth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition in Vancouver BC, Canada.

The Subtlety of Gender Bias: robots, classrooms, and Top Chef

Doug Blank — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:15:04 -0400

Here at the IPRE, we are working on developing hardware, software, and course materials based on robots for use in teaching introductory computing courses.

One aspect of the project that we are very conscious of is how the students might perceive robots in the classroom. One of our goals is to develop materials that will attract students into computing. If we use a device that some students find alienating, then we will, of course, have failed. So, we are sensitive to such perceptions, specifically those that have gender correlations.

How can one develop materials that are sensitive to gender biases? The same way that you write good software: you need to test. Feedback is the only way that you can know for certain, and then you revise and test again. We all have biases and, even when we are aware of that fact, these biases can still pop-up and have adverse affects.