On May 20, 2016, IEEE held the RoboResearch seminar 2016 at the Hunt Library at Centennial Campus at NC State University. We had about 40 people stopped by our booth and interacted with KEN and other team members. We also implemented survey research for the first time. Below is a summary of the event.

“RoboResearch 2016 is a two day event, jointly sponsored by the North Carolina Council of IEEE and Industrial & Systems Engineering at NC State University.  The objective for the first day is to promote interaction between the North Carolina Business community and it Universities, while the second focuses more on promoting STEM to help a new generation of innovators.  We  invite robotics researchers from the educational community as well as robotics researchers and designers from industries throughout North Carolina.

Attendees will meet other researchers and designers in the same and related fields. We are hoping that members of our local industries will be introduced to the inter-relationship with the educational institutes in our State so that some day they may be able to work together toward common goals.”

Here is the link to the event: http://site.ieee.org/ncc-roboresearch/

On May 12, 2016, Ken visited the Senior Golf social group at Prestonwood Country Club with Grayson, Daniel, and Lixiao. About 22  group members attended the dinner and presentation of KEN. Overall, the group enjoyed the event and provide good feedback.

On April 1, KEN visited the SoutheastCon 2016 in Norfolk, VA. About 45 people came to the first-day workshop at 10:15 am on April 1. Daniel did the introduction of KEN’s history, functions of KEN, and demo. Lixiao introduced KEN’s previous visits and some findings with the outreach events, and the current activities with the IEEE foundation grant and with the Forge Initiative. The workshop also did small group discussions on functionality, people, and process. People had a lot of great input and thoughts. The talk ended at noon, but people were so interested that they stayed until 12:30pm.

From noon to 5pm on April 1, KEN was at the exhibition table right outside the hardware competition room. He caught attention from everyone who were passing by. Many people stop by to ask questions, take photos, and interact with KEN. On April 2, KEN has a second workshop and exhibition. 19 people came to the workshop. Numerous people came to the booth to interact with the robot and ask questions. Many of them expressed interest in joining the team in some way.

KEN won a lot of fans at the SoutheastCon 2016 conference.

We brought KEN to the NC State University Centennial Campus on February 18, 2016.  One of the purposes is to increase the public awareness of humanoid robots, and more importantly, the second objective is to recruit undergraduate students and graduate students to work on the second generation of the humanoid robot with the Forge Initiative children and families at Hopewell Acadamy. About 65 students from different majors came to the meeting. They asked many interesting questions during the demonstration. After the talk, many students came to the front to interact with the robot carefully and asked Daniel, the lead developer, more questions about the robot. Several students signed up to participate in the robot-building activities. It was a successful event.

Grayson, Daniel, and KEN presented the objectives of the project and the progress to date to an audience of nearly 100 people.

This event was open to the public and brought many families with children through to see the variety of robot displays set up by members of The Forge Initiative who organized the event.  The IEEE ENCS Humanoid Robot Project was invited to show KEN.