Popular Science

Semester exams are looming, with an extended holiday break on their heels. But before Dr. Andrea Thomaz closes the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the season, the lab hosted a few more visitors last week for the final experiment of the semester. The lab welcomes guests to interact with Simon, a humanoid robot developed with seed funds from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). These interactions allow student-researchers to adjust software models for Simon's learning and behavior generation. And it all starts once Thomaz and her team wake the resting robot.