Research Informed Teaching - Pepper the Robot attends Lectures

For the past 15 years, the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research Group has focused its work on artificial life and rehabilitation and assistive robotics, with expertise in neurorehabilitation robots, robot-assisted play, and socially assistive robots. As part of the University’s strategic plan it would like to encourage students to develop an understanding of the history and role of research in computer science. The University would like to support a research-rich environment that informs our teaching.

In all our computer science courses at the University we teach a module called Contemporary Issues in Information Technology. Within this module we have included a lecture on “The Rise of the Robots”. We invite one of our resident robots, Pepper to take part in the lecture. Pepper can talk to the students, answer questions about the module and even invite them to dance. In this paper we will describe our experiences of using Pepper in lectures and how we have used this as a way to engage students in the research process and encourage research skills.