Welcome to our Human-Robot Interaction Page!

Programmers: Kevin Germino, Paul Kaefer, and Dustin Venske

Final Project: Humanoid Robot Comedian

For our final class project, we built upon our midterm project to program a humanoid robot comedian that responds to its audience.

The paper we wrote, "Computational Awareness in a Tactile-Responsive Humanoid Robot Comedian," will be presented at the IEEE SMC 2013 conference in Manchester, UK!

Midterm Project: Robot Friend

For the Midterm Project, we programmed Stacy to be a robot friend. She tells jokes, puns, and tries to make her user laugh. She exhibits emotion by changing up her jokes if the user does not find them funny.

At one point during her routine, Stacy will scratch her head and say, "I am thinking of a joke." She doesn't actually have to do this, but it makes her seem more human-like. People tend to be more comfortable with robots that seem like people. This feature increases her likeability.

Here is a screenshot of some of our Choregraphe code.

Another thing that makes Stacy special is that she asks for feedback. After she tells her jokes, she will ask, "Did I make you laugh today?" If the user responds negatively, Stacy will listen and record feedback. She saves the recording, so she can learn from it later.

Check out our video demonstration of Stacy's abilities below:

Stacy on TV

Stacy is on TV! Here's the link to the video. She dances around 1:37. It's so exciting that Dr. Williams and the HEIR lab are getting positive publicity. I can imagine how this can have a positive impact on STEM outreach efforts, both for Marquette University and STEM in general.

Open House Demonstration

Kevin Germino, Paul Kaefer, and Dustin Venske programmed a Nao robot to talk to students at the Engineering Open House. The Nao, whose name is Stacy (click here to see a picture of Stacy), can recite pi to twenty digits, tells her story, and talks about Marquette.

Stacy also shows some emotion. Her eyes light up different colors when she is conversing, and she waves and moves around. She can even dance!

We made a video to demonstrate Stacy's skills. You can watch it below:

Useful links