Sophia Stuart of PCMag interviewed Okita, who works in the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program, at the symposium. "This is a threshold year for HRI [human-robot interaction]," she says in the article. "It's no longer the preserve of the computer science or engineering field, but has expanded to encompass art, neuroscience, philosophy, and social sciences." Okita is an expert on educational theory and HRI. She uses "technological boundary objects" like virtual avatars and robots to study children's ability to learn and problem solve.

"Now that the price of robots has gone down sufficiently, and the popular maker faire DIY elements and tool kits have made robots a potentially viable learning tool for public schools, the younger generation of teachers are more familiar with technology and robots, and are more willing to see how they can incorporate these tools to enhance their curriculum, learning experiences, student assessment, and adapting to students' needs, just to name a few," Okita told PCMag.

In addition, writes Stuart, "At this year's RO-MAN, the overarching theme was helping our silicon cousins develop socio-emotional skills so they can play well with others, so to speak. Great advances have been made in machine vision, motion capture, memory, reasoning, platforms, tools, databases, and evaluation measures. Now it's all about giving them a personality and making us like them."

"One clear opportunity that we've been examining here at the conference, is how robots can make human-to-human interaction smarter," Okita says in the article. "We're now at the stage of HRI where it's no longer about what robots are, or what they can do—but what role can they play in our lives going forward."

Read the full story here. See a video interview with Okita about her work in Mini-Moments With Big Thinkers, here.

Published Tuesday, Oct 4, 2016