Evolving the Romibo Social Robot: Lessons in design for use, misuse, ...

• Location
  CMU Silicon Valley, Moffett Field, Room 118

• Subject
  Evolving the Romibo Social Robot: Lessons in design for use, misuse, appropriation, amalgamation, and abandonment.

• Talk abstract
  Romibo robots are being used around the world in a wide range of applications never expected.

Beginning life as Aubrey Shick's graduate research project in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Romibo has been touched by dozens of individuals and continues development today as a product of Origami Robotics Inc. Over 30 Romibo robots have been built and span seven major design generations. Robots have been placed in 5 countries with uses including: academic research on social robot physical form features, cross-cultural multilingual hack-a-thons with Spanish and German students, STEM outreach with underprivileged African American children in Atlanta, robot-facilitated art-therapy, NASA Mars-analogue habitat pet for astronauts in isolation research, individualized clinician-patient therapy, classroom reading skills in after school programs and public libraries, social skills for children with autism, intergenerational teens+eldercare programs, English language skills for Danish students and other applications.

• Short speaker(s) biography including current position and title

A rural American girl from the Rust-belt lands in the heart of Silicon Valley. Aubrey Shick began as a sculptor, attendend Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh for Industrial design, but quickly wondered across campus and found herself in the Robotics Institute. Midway though a Ph.D in Human-Computer Interaction, Aubrey developed a low-cost social robot for autism therapy. She left the program with her masters and acquired funding to continue development at the Quality of Life Technology Center in the Robotics Institute. With an award from the National Science Foundation, she incorporated Origami Robotics to commercially develop the Romibo robot. Aubrey served as the CEO of Origami Robotics from 2011 until June of 2014.

Aubrey Shick is currently an independent social-tech consultant in robotics, wearables, smart-environments and other personal electronics.