Public Engagement with Robotics, Animatronics and Artificial Intelligence

机器人学、动漫电子学和人工智能是培养公众参与科学、工程和技术的理想工具；它们是本质上具有说服力和参与性的学科。要有效地参与这些领域的当代问题，需要迈出的重要一步是在科学家和工程师以及活动的促进者和传播者之间建立所需的技能和关系。然而，工程师们已经发现，需要在研究上花费更多的时间是与公众接触的一个主要缺点，因此很难找到时间来发展这些技能并产生高质量的公共参与活动。2007年9月，EPSRC的一个阶段奖资助了为期3年的与机器人同行(WWR)计划，为那些从事机器人和相关研究的人提供支持，以开展公共参与活动。然而，为了提供基于其研究的创新公共参与活动，WWR网络成员必须从外部机构(如行业、政府、慈善机构和学术机构)寻求额外资金。WWR现在是一个由工程研究人员和公众参与专家组成的不断扩大的网络。在过去的八个月里，WWR成功地举办了一些小规模的、可重复的活动，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。这个项目将设计和运行一个住宅研讨会，目的是有效地开发一些这样的小活动，同时加强现有WWR网络成员和新研究人员的公共参与技能。*在为期3天的研讨会过程中，参与者将体验公共参与活动从构思到交付到评估的整个生命周期。研讨会以如此精简的形式举办，旨在减轻研究时间的长期压力，以便设计和提供可重复使用的公共参与活动，主题为机器人学、动漫电子学和人工智能。*项目的交付阶段将利用这种讲习班将产生的势头，申请者希望在2008年期间在一些科学节上使用讲习班的成果。这些节日是经过精心挑选的，因为它们有大量的参观者，而且分布在不同的地理和时间上。这意味着，无论研究人员身在何处，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.