Thursday 24 December 2015

This the droid I've been playing with...



I have been fortunate to be able to get  Aldebaran NAO robots (https://plus.google.com/100795863694331917596/about or https://www.aldebaran.com/en) and have a play. 


Funding for these came through matched STEM investment from HEFCE (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/). Bought for teaching, especially around the growing area of Social Robotics but also for outreach and in-reach activities.

These are very cute but very well featured robots and also out of the box they are engaging. For reason, before they were fully set-up,  I had my first opportunity today to try an Aldebaran NAO robot as a teaching tool in an Artificial Intelligence (AI) class on Thursday 17th December 2015. The session was an end of term activity around summarising what we did in the AI class so far and questions.  A question came up around AI and it's impact on society. Perfect opportunity to bring in a social robot - especially as a precursor for when we include a session on social robotics next term.
Currently I am playing with them a little more. Two have being partially set-up now name "Red" and "Smurf". 
 The video link below shows "Red" in action (Walking holding the hand of my son; sitting down and standing up on command - some of the time.)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BhHJhGmXJc


I would love to hear from others what they have being doing with these robots or other robots for that matter. Please comment below.


All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

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