Rossum's Children

Wired.com has released an excellent editorial/in depth article on human and robot interaction research being done at the Early Childhood Education Center in San Diego. The article talks about the researchers work there, describes some of the author's personal reactions to the program and talks about the future of robotics.

The main children in focus here are Rubi, and Qrio. Rubi (pictured here) is the ECEC's own in-house research bot. Built for just under $3,000 Rubi acts as a teacher and singalong leader for the kinds in short increments. She is part autonomous robot and part pre-scripted drone. And Qrio is on loan from Sony, along with a researcher who is studying how to make him more dynamic and more capable of emulating human interactions.

The article is a great read if this is your field. Have a glance.

R is for Robot [wired.com]