Robotics Exhibits for Science Centres. Some Prototypes

Abstract

Robots are attractive for public as they represent a clear and ambitious scientific challenge: an artificial being creation similar to natural ones by man. The popular enthusiasm grows up in parallel with huge scientific research progress in this field. On this success wave many Science Centers, Science Museums and Science Festivals propose spaces and moments to spread theoretic, methodological and technical issues of this discipline.

In this paper we describe some of our exhibits prototypes that were designed and carried out to communicate main approaches of modern robotics (telerobotics, cognitive robotics, autonomous and evolutionary robotics and collective robotics). These exhibits have been conceived as laboratories where a visitor can experiment and put the hands on various kinds of robot. They have been accomplished by putting together cheap and easily available materials. This way it has been possible to present these exhibits in many important scientific divulgation events throughout Europe with a relatively modest expense.