Robot thought II: national rollout
A fully-interactive dialogue event, designed to challenge and stimulate public thinking about the latest developments in robotics.
Would you like to have your house cleaned automatically by a robot? Would you trust a robot babysitter? If a fully-functional, thinking robot could be developed, would you consider it human?
'Robot Thought' was a fully-interactive dialogue event, designed to challenge and stimulate public thinking about the latest developments in robotics.
The event used the format of a traditional entertaining science "show" which was broken down into a series of short dramatic vignettes to highlight important practical, personal and social issues relating to robotics, allowing the audience to get involved in a discussion about the latest advances in robotics and the implications of robotics on future society.
The Science Communication Unit, in collaboration with robotics experts at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, formed partnerships with various Science Centres and Robotics Research Laboratories to produce a national rollout of the successful Robot Thought pilot project. We were awarded £111,916 from the EPSRC's PPE Programme for the project.
Our robotics research partners included:
- The Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of the West of England, Bristol
- The Intelligent Robotics Group at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
- The Cricket Lab at the University of Edinburgh
Robot Thought was rolled out at various venues across the UK during 2006 and 2007:
- Centre for Life, Newcastle
- Techniquest Glyndwr
- W5 Belfast
- Edinburgh Science Festival
- Techniquest
- Thinktank
- DANA Centre
Full evaluation details from the national rollout of the 'Robot Thought' project are now available, including the final evaluation report and individual reports from each stage of the programme:
- Final Evaluation Report
- Evaluation 1: Science Museum - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 2: Thinktank - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 3: Techniquest - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 4: EISF - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 5: W5 - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 6: Techniquest@NEWI - Successes, challenges and recommendations (PDF)
- Evaluation 7: Centre for Life - Successes and challenges (PDF)