Robots and Physical Computing

On the 17th April 2018 I had the honour of presenting a public talk on robots for the Northampton Branch of the Britsh Computer Society (BCS). This post aims to summarise the session. The session was really from a personal perspective and journey, covering where I think robots in home and schools are going, and an overview of some of the projects I have been involved. First, part was the presentation - the slides are shown below. Robots Talk British Computer Society Northampton_17_4_2018 from Scott Turner The videos used in the presentations are shown below. The first video is an introduction and welcome from Red the Nao robot. Next video shows a programmed Cozmo, using Anki's graphical programming language. Second section of the session was playing with the robots. Red the Nao , an Anki Cozmo and an UBtech Alpha2 and having a play with a Crumble -based junkbots.  Crumble junkbots were used on PC and Raspberry Pi via Pi-top CEED . Red ...

Experimenting with an Aldebaran NAO robot - nicknamed Smurf - to get the robot to deliver a short welcome. The video below show the robot being simulated using the code in figure 1 and then shows the 'Smurf' actually carrying out the routine (the bottom video show this bit without the simulator). The only difference in the code on the simulator and the one running on the actual robot was an extra command was added at the start of the one on the robot to only start when the top of the head is tapped. figure 1. Choregraphe program for the routine. 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.

#TMPlaydate @UniNorthants bringing together arts and science with education for teachers. Looking forward to this duo pic.twitter.com/QPcAfO4r9N — Steve Taylor (@SteveTaylorArts) June 8, 2016 Red and Tom at #tmplaydate pic.twitter.com/ijGGMeSrFb — Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 8, 2016 Getting ready to talk about the Robot Arm project at #tmplaydate @santanderuk @UniNorthants pic.twitter.com/tpYbRM4WTP — Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 8, 2016 @JeanEd70 @scottturneruon I always wondered what your belly button was for... — Alan Calderwood (@calderwa) June 8, 2016 Red is showing offer 'her' tricks today - some of the time! #TMPlaydate pic.twitter.com/gNMuwFDT9A — Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 8, 2016 Robots, stop-go animation & multisensory learning. All part of tonight's #tmplaydate @HelenCaldwel @scottturneruon pic.twitter.com/HBrgm4DIJ8 — UniofNorthamptonNews (@UniNhantsNews) June 8, 2016 "We have...

Sometimes what I do as job can have some major personal pluses (I get to play with robots some of the time), one of these has been the opportunity to introduce people to social robots, and recently I have been lucky enough to managed to do this four times-   twice to my own computing students, but also to groups of primary school children in two events (see below).  Apart from it's what I enjoyed doing; the social robots we are starting to see are great, but there is so much more that could be done. Who is going to develop this - possibly one of these children? Why not? It has taken nearly 40 years to get from R2D2 on the screen to some of the social robots we are seeing launched now, in another 40 years we might have something as bright as R2D2 (R2D2 was always brighter than C3PO) . Why wouldn't one or more of these bright children or one of the students I teach, be the ones to contribute to this? They have the enthusiasm, with the changes in the National Curriculum in...

Ok, I need to read the manual! Managed today to play with Aldebaran NAO again and was struggling to get it to interact - this is the should have read the manual bit, it was all in there. Mistake number 1 - I hadn't set a channel for all the apps so it was reacting to sounds and movement but not much more. So I set it. Mistake number 2 - not understanding the meaning of the changes in the colour of the eyes, when the eyes go blue NAO is listening. Now  it does what I was after - to be lead by the hand using the follow me app and react to some vocal commands. The video below shows "Red" in action. I would be interest in others experiences with these robots, if you would like please add your comments 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.

Photo by John Sinclair I had my first opportunity today to try an Aldebaran NAO robot as a teaching tool in an AI class today. 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. 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.

This is just a short post, as well as being able to go to Picademy this week ( http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/picademy-7-8th-december-2015.html ); I have been fortunate to be able to borrow an Aldebaran NAO robot ( https://www.aldebaran.com/en ) for the weekend to play with. This is an extermly cool robot, straight out of the box, tracking movement and dynamic balancing. Hopefully, more on this in future posts. 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.