Computer Vision News - February 2023

13 Katherine Kuchenbecker to recruit many people to join our studies about this HuggyBot robot who hadn't hugged anyone inmonths because they had been isolated in quarantine. People really liked hugging our robot! It's soft, warm, and responsive. We also sterilized it. We completely washed its outfit and sterilized it between people, and they wore a mask. We had the robot wear a mask also, so they would feel safer. In Italy, we have a game called the Game of the Tower. I don't know if it exists in other countries. You have two people, and you have to throw one of them from the top of the tower. If I asked you, you have Katherine, the researcher, and Katherine, the teacher. Which one do you throw? Well, I already did this because I was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wheremy jobdescriptionwas both teaching and research. I taught Introduction to Robotics to about 170 students, senior undergraduates, master students, and a few PhD students. Every fall and every spring, I taught about 100 undergraduates invent the Da Vinci robot, and it gives the surgeon a very good 3D view. They move the instruments around, but they don't feel anything. And so, again, they're not directly touching the patient. They're sterile, sanitary, not being contaminated, but they cannot feel that reaction. That makes manipulation more difficult because we are used to reaching out. In your car, for example, you want to adjust the radio volume. If it's a physical knob, you can find it without taking your eyes off the road. You can keepwatching and approximately reach out, recognize the physical features and manipulate it. This is actually a big problem in the auto industry. If it's a graphical display with digital controls, I need to avert my eyes and look at it to understand exactly where and how to manipulate it. Car companies are very interested in adding haptics, even to screen-based interaction. My first PhD student here in Germany, she and I were making a hugging robot at the time when the pandemic hit. And it ended upbeingmuchmore relevant.Wewere able Shari Kuchenbecker