The Robotics Institute’s Howie Choset, Joydeep Biswas, Heather Knight and Marek Michalowski are featured in CNN’s Geek Out blog, where they talk about what compels people to build robots.
From the blog:
“For all of C-3PO’s sleek, humanoid design and eloquent chatter, it is R2-D2’s charming, melodic beeping and rolling about in “Star Wars” that captures the imagination of a roboticist – even though a humanoid robot is exactly what everyone else expects when they look to the modern landscape of robotics.
“It’s what Marek Michalowski, roboticist and co-founder of BeatBots, calls a paradoxical “burden of science fiction,” which both inspires and constrains what people anticipate from robotics. He and other roboticists feel compelled to deliver on the unspoken promise of anthropomorphized, or humanoid, robots, built up within sci-fi over the last 40 years.”