Public Engagement with Robotics, Animatronics and Artificial Intelligence

机器人、动画和人工智能是建立公众参与科学、工程和技术的理想工具;它们是本质上引人注目和令人兴奋的学科。实现有效参与这些领域当代问题所需的一个重要步骤是在科学家和工程师以及活动的促进者和提供者之间建立所需的技能和关系。然而，工程师们已经确定，需要花更多的时间在研究上与公众接触的一个主要缺点，所以找到时间来发展这些技能，并产生高质量的公众参与活动是困难的。在2007年9月，EPSRC阶段奖资助3年与机器人（WWR）计划行走，为机器人和相关研究提供支持，以提供公众参与活动。然而，为了在其研究的基础上开展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。在过去的八个月里，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，因为它们涉及到该领域大多数活跃研究人员更可实现的承诺。该项目将设计和运行一个住宅研讨会，旨在有效地开发一些这样的小活动，同时加强WWR现有网络成员和新研究人员的公众参与技能。在为期3天的研讨会中，参与者将体验公众参与活动从概念到交付再到评估的生命周期。工作坊以精简的形式进行，旨在减少研究时间的长期压力，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。* 该项目的交付阶段将利用这样一个研讨会将产生的势头，申请人寻求在2008年期间的一些科学节上使用研讨会的成果。这些节日是经过精心挑选的，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.