Public Engagement with Robotics, Animatronics and Artificial Intelligence

机器人技术、电子动画学和人工智能是促进公众参与科学、工程和技术的理想工具；它们是具有内在吸引力和吸引力的主题。要有效处理这些领域的当代问题，需要采取的一个重要步骤是在科学家和工程师以及事件的促进者和交付者之间建立所需的技能和关系。然而，工程师们已经认识到，需要花更多的时间在研究上，这是与公众接触的一个主要缺点，因此，找到时间来发展这些技能并开展高质量的公众参与活动是困难的。2007年9月，EPSRC阶段奖资助了为期3年的机器人行走（WWR）计划，为机器人技术和相关研究提供支持，以提供公众参与活动。然而，为了在他们的研究基础上提供创新的公众参与活动，WWR网络成员必须从外部机构（例如行业，政府，慈善机构和学术机构）寻求额外的资金。WWR现在是一个不断扩大的工程研究人员和公众参与专家网络。在过去的8个月里，WWR在运行一些小规模的、可重复的活动方面取得了相当大的成功，因为它们涉及到对该领域的大多数活跃研究人员更容易实现的承诺。该项目将设计并运行一个住宅工作坊，目的是有效地开展一些小型活动，同时加强现有WWR网络成员和新研究人员的公众参与技能。*在为期3天的工作坊中，参与者将体验公众参与活动从构思到交付再到评估的整个生命周期。工作坊以如此浓缩的形式进行，旨在减少长期的研究时间压力，以便在机器人、电子动画和人工智能的主题下设计和提供可重复使用的公众参与活动。*项目的交付阶段将利用工作坊所产生的动力，让申请人在2008年的多个科学节中使用工作坊的成果。这些节日是特意选择的，因为它们有大量的参与者，并且在地理上和时间上都很分散。这意味着，无论研究人员在哪里，他们都应该能够参加一个节日。

Robotics, Animatronics and Artificial Intelligence are ideal vehicles for building public engagement in science, engineering and technology; they are subjects that are intrinsically compelling and engaging.A major step needed to achieve effective engagement with the contemporary issues in these areas is the building of the required skills and relationships amongst the scientists and engineers, and the facilitators and deliverers of events. However, engineers have identified the need to spend more time on research as a major drawback for engaging with the public , so finding the time to develop these skills and produce high quality public engagement activities is difficult.In September 2007 an EPSRC stage award funded the 3-year Walking with Robots (WWR) programme to provide support for those in robotics and related research to deliver public engagement events. However, in order to deliver innovative public engagement activities based on their research, WWR network members must seek additional funding from external bodies (e.g. industry, government, charities and learned institutions). WWR is now a continually expanding network of engineering researchers and public engagement experts. Over the last eight months the WWR has had a considerable amount of success in running a number of small-scale, repeatable activities as they involve a more achievable commitment for the majority of active researchers in this field.This project will devise and run a residential workshop with the aim of efficiently developing a number of these small activities, at the same time as strengthening the public engagement skills of both existing WWR network members and new researchers.* Over the course of a 3-day workshop, participants will experience the lifecycle of a public engagement event from conception through delivery to evaluation. The running of the workshop in such a condensed format seeks to reduce a prolonged pressure on research time in order to devise and deliver a reusable public engagement activity under the theme of Robotics, Animatronics and Artificial Intelligence. * The delivery phase of the project will capitalise on the momentum such a workshop will generate the applicants seek to use the output of the workshop at a number of science festivals during 2008. The festivals have been deliberately chosen as they have large numbers of attendees and are spread both geographically and over time. This means that regardless of the location of the researcher they should be able to attend a festival.