Humanoid Robots for Healthier and Smarter Kids
Why not join our revolution?
Why not you contribute to our technology revolution: Humanoid Robots for Healthier and Smarter Kids”?
What if you came home and plugged your smartphone into your humanoid robot’s head and suddenly your humanoid became animated with emotional gestures, interactive conversations, and autonomous behaviors designed to assist you and your children in promoting healthy habits or assisting with a learning disability. What if the robot used your smartphone activities to gage how active, or inactive, you were at work and suggested an interactive exercise routine for you. What if the robot was used to train your children in complex mathematics and robot design and programming so that they could be better prepared for a high tech career.
You may or may not agree with that vision of humanoid robotics but you must agree that it won’t happen without someone having that vision. This is the vision of our Humanoid Engineering & Intelligent Robotics (HEIR) Lab at Marquette University. But you say, Marquette is not MIT or Stanford, how could this be? One eloquent modern philosopher, Spike Lee, put it this way: talent can come from anywhere. You should meet the students at Marquette University’s College of Engineering students that I get to interact with every day. They believe that anything is possible and I believe in them. Just a little over a year ago we decided to ask the question: why not? Why not we be the ones that help bring about a revolution in health and education by building our own humanoid robot to assist kids. Why not our research and development be part of the trigger that helps the vision of having low-cost humanoid robots that help kids in health and STEM education in their schools and homes.
We decided to reach this longer term goal by having a shorter, intermediate goal of competing in RoboCup. What is RoboCup? RoboCup is the World Cup of robotics and artificial intelligence. RoboCup is an international joint research project whose goal is to develop humanoid robots that can beat the human World Cup champions in Soccer by the year 2050. This year, RoboCup 2014 will be held in Brazil, the country hosting the human World Cup. This year, our HEIR lab students, qualified to compete in the TeenSize humanoid robot soccer league world championships by building our own 3D printed two-legged humanoid robot. But this year is only the beginning of the revolution. This year is only part of the vision.
What if you were the one that came up with the idea for the iPhone? What if you were there when the iPad came into being. I was there at Apple after hearing Steve Jobs call me to work there. I know from his life what happens when one man has a vision for a revolution. Why not you be part of our vision for a technology revolution of humanoid robots for healthier and smarter children. Why not you contribute to our revolution: Humanoid Robots for Healthier and Smarter Kids”
