[Robotgroup] Article: "Peacebots Picket Robotic Violence"

[Vern Graner]

Heh! RoboProtestors! :D

 From this link:

http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2007-10-25/peacebots.shtml

Comes this story:

-------------------------- CLIP -------------------------
Peacebots Picket Robotic Violence
Bryn Mawr 10/25/2007

What do robots do in the real world? They vacuum floors, work on 
assembly lines, assist with laparoscopic surgery and, as of last 
Saturday, march for peace.

The peacebots that demonstrated at the Franklin Institute on Oct. 20 
were programmed by four students from Associate Professor of Computer 
Science Doug Blank's introductory course in computer science, which uses 
robotics to introduce the basic principles of the discipline. Calling 
themselves People for the Ethical Treatment of Robots, they were a 
comical counterbalance to an event titled "Robot Conflict," in which 
pairs of robots faced off against each other in a glass-walled arena to 
"smash, toss or cut their opponents to bits," as the Institute's Web 
site said.

Robot Conflict, organized by the Northeast Robotics Club (NERC), was 
part of Robot Day, an exhibition designed to foster local kids' interest 
in robotics technology. Robot Day was hosted by the Institute's 
Partnerships for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science (PACTS) 
program, which works with local middle- and high-school students.

Blank and his students organized the robotic picket line, which carried 
signs bearing mottos like "Make code not war," "Thou shalt not press 
others' kill switch," and "Extendable arms are for hugging," partly to 
give those attending the event a chuckle. But their tongue-in-cheek 
protest was also designed to call attention to some serious issues.
Peace Programmers with Robots

As a computer scientist at Bryn Mawr and the director of the Institute 
for Personal Robotics in Education, Blank is deeply committed to making 
the academic culture of computer science more welcoming to women and 
other groups who are underrepresented in the field. He questions the 
ability of a combat model to do that.

It's telling, Blank said, that of more than a hundred participants in 
the combat event, only one was female. Although the students in the PACT 
program are quite diverse, he said, the NERC members who entered the 
contest were overwhelmingly white and male.

"This kind of event appeals to a specific demographic," Blank says. "I 
think that using this as a community-outreach activity just tends to 
perpetuate the current situation in science and technology fields. Kids 
watching the battle bots see a lot of guys operating them, and little 
boys get the implicit message that they could grow up to do something 
like this, but little girls get a different message."

Elena Stock and Rebecca Rebhuhn-Glanz, both first-year students who 
participated in the protest, acknowledge that the robot combat was fun 
to watch.

"But," Rebhuhn-Glanz says, "If I were designing a robot, that's not what 
it would be doing. I'm not sure it broadens the appeal of robotics. We 
had one of our robots drawing, and I think we reached more of the little 
kids with that. There was also a dancing robot, and the kids loved that, 
too."

Blank isn't entirely comfortable with using violence as a pedagogical 
tool, either. "Even though it's robots that are fighting and people 
aren't hurt, the violence is real in a way that a video game, for 
instance, is not. A lot of real damage is done to the robots."

"Robot parts were flying," says Stock. "The floor got all ripped up, and 
they had to keep sweeping it up because there were little bot bits all 
over the place."

"We weren't really protesting robot violence," Blank says. "People have 
a lot of fun doing this, and that's great. I don't have any objection to 
that, but if people are going to use it for education, they ought to 
think twice. I think there are better ways to get kids involved in 
engineering, and to get more kids involved in technology."

Stock says that she feels relatively unaffected by gender stereotypes 
and found the battle bots very appealing, but she and Rebhuhn-Glanz 
agreed that the macho culture of science can be unwelcoming to women. 
Both have friends who attend a technological institute with a high ratio 
of men to women.

"You have to be really competitive to survive in a situation like that," 
Rebhuhn-Glanz says.

As for Stock, she thinks Blank is onto something with his use of 
robotics to make computer science more appealing to students.

"Coming from a background of absolutely no computer science, I was 
pleasantly surprised to find out that we would be working with something 
that applies it. A robot does take what you're doing that's very 
abstract and translates it into a physical reality, which is really 
satisfying. It's really diminished my mathphobia and my computerphobia. 
I came in with the intention of majoring in either psychology or 
international relations, and now I'm considering a major in computer 
science."
------------------------- /CLIP -------------------------

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG