Puppy Bots and Bot Tour Guides: Inside a Human-Robot Interaction Class at UC San Diego

A robot that dances on command. A robot that behaves like a puppy – sometimes happy, sometimes sad. A robot that guides visitors on one floor of an engineering building.

These are some of the projects developed by students in a human-robot interaction class taught this spring by computer science professor Laurel Riek at the University of California San Diego. The class, CSE 190/276B, which is open to both graduate students and undergraduates, gives students an overview of the field. It culminates in a hands-on project where students work in groups to program a robot to interact with people in a setting of their choice.

“I wanted students to think about what it means to build a robot that interacts with people and how to do this effectively,” Riek said. “What does it mean to put human-robot interaction into practice?”

Another group, made up of computer science undergraduate students, was using a different mobile robot known as a TurtleBot. Their goal was to program the robot to act as a tour guide on the second floor of Franklin Antonio Hall on the UC San Diego campus. The robot can answer questions and is equipped with a detailed map so it can guide visitors to specific locations, such as labs and offices. The students in the group were Pragna Guntupalli, Anika Dontu, Faizan Niazi and Pranav Reddy Bussannagari.

Undergraduate seniors Janeen Taitingfong and Bowen “Bee” Bothello were turning Pupper into a master of ceremonies for party games. “The goal is to see how a robot can facilitate play,” said Taitingfong. The most difficult part of the project was synchronizing the timing of the various sensors the robot uses, including vision and touch, Bothello said.

Students were all preparing to run user tests on their robots. “We only have two people for our tests so far, but maybe we’ll get more,” Taitingfong said. “The winner gets a 3D-printed trophy.”

Riek, who is a human-robot interaction expert, holds the David R. Miller Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering. She also has a faculty affiliation in the Department of Emergency Medicine in the UC San Diego School of Medicine.