CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Project 1
Review of Human-Centered Robotics in Movies and Real-World Applications
Assigned: August 25, 2014
Multiple Due Dates (all materials must be submitted via BlackBoard by group leader)
Report and Slides Due: September 12, 23:59:59
In-Class Presentation Period: September 15 – September 19
Introduction
In this project, you will have the opportunity to investigate human-centered robots that exist in our
real life or intelligent robotic systems described in science fiction movies. The objective of this project
is to (1) motivate students to discover broad impact of human-centered robots and their potentials in
the future (as illustrated in science fiction movies), and (2) help students discover interesting
applications that can be used in their Term Project.
Project 1 is a group project. Each team consists of 6-7 students, including 3-4 students from CSCI 498B
and 2-3 students from CSCI 598B. Students in each team need to select a group leader, setup meetings,
and finish a review report collaboratively. The group leader is responsible for managing this project,
contacting the instructor if necessary, and submitting the report and slides through Blackboard before
due dates. This project also involves an in-class presentation period, in which each group should
provide a 20 minutes presentation followed by a 5 minutes QA.
Review Topics and Groups
Students in the class are divided into five groups. Each group contains 6-7 students, 3-4 students from
CSCI 498B and 2-3 students from CSCI 598B. Each group is assigned with a topic, i.e., a subfield of
human-centered robotics from application perspective. The following is the list of the five humancentered robotics topics and their (non-official) definitions:
1. Social robotics: A social robot is an autonomous robot that interacts and communicates with
humans or other autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules attached
to its role (from wiki).
2. Assistive robotics: An assistive robot performs a physical task for the well-being of a person (the
elderly or disabled). The task is embedded in the context of normal human activities of daily
living (ADLs) and would otherwise have to be performed by an attendant. The person with the
disability controls the functioning of the robot.
3. Healthcare and medical robotics: Robots used in healthcare and medical treatment.
4. Defense and security robotics: Robots used in defense and security.
5. Robots in movies: The topic title is pretty self-explanatory.
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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The groups are as follows:
2. Assistive
3. Healthcare
4. Defense
5. Movies
CSCI598B
CSCI498B
1. Social
Procedures to generate the groups: All students who attended the first two classes are assigned to a
group using a program that generally follows the brute-force algorithm:
topic_id = 0;
while ( !empty(csci498b) ) {
student_id = random_select_student (csci498b);
add_student (student_id, topic_id);
remove_student (student_id, csci498b);
topic_id = (topic_id + 1) % 5;
}
If your name does not show in any group, please let the instructor know.
Questions to Think
In this review, students are expected to provide their comments on the robots. In particular, students
may focus their comments/discussions on the following questions (but definitely not limited to these
questions):
Questions for Group 1-4
 Do you think this application domain is important? Why?
 What are the challenges of applying robotic systems in this application?
 What characteristics made the robots particularly suitable for the application?
 How do the robots perceive its environment? How do they act to change the world?
 Are the robots intelligent? Adaptive? Is adaptation important in this application?
 What are limitations of the robots in the application?
 If you have all technologies to make a perfect robot, what kind of robot would you want to
construct for the application?
 Please raise questions and make comments on anything you think is insightful or interesting.
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Questions for Group 5:
 In what application domains are the robots used in movies?
 What are the critical capabilities for the robots to finish its tasks in movies?
 How do the robots interact with people in science fiction movies?
 Are those robots human-like? Does appearance affect their interaction with people?
 Through observing the robots in fictions, what problems/issues do you think we, humans, need
to avoid when developing our robotics technology?
 You have watched several most advanced robots in real life, what are the limitations of the
real-world robots comparing with the robots in movies?
 Please raise questions and make comments on anything you think is insightful or interesting.
Turning in Your Project
This project has a single due date (for report and slides). The contents required to be included in each
submission are listed as follows:
Report and Slides (due on Sept. 12, 23:59:59):
(1). Review report of human-centered robots and your comments on/answers to the questions;
the format of the review report must be PDF.
(2). Workload report (agreed upon by all team members) in Appendix of the review report,
which states what each team member reviews on this project, along with a percentage
breakdown (totaling 100%).
(3). Slides your team will use for your in-class presentation; format of the slides can be PDF,
PPT, or PPTX.
Note: The reports and slides must be submitted by the team leader to BlackBoard.
In-Class Presentation will be scheduled between Sept. 15 and Sept. 19. During that period, you will
have the chance to present, as a team, your reviews of the robots you found and your comments on
the robots. The time limit for each group is 25 minutes: 20 presentation, followed by a 5 minutes
questions and answers.
Report Guidelines
As part of your completed project, each team must prepare a report (3-6 pages) describing your
project 1. Your paper must be formatted using LaTex and the standard 2-column IEEE conference paper
format. Please do not exceed 6 pages for your paper.
 See file styles:
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html
 An example of the paper format is available here:
http://inside.mines.edu/~hzhang/Courses/CSCI498B-598B-Fall14/Projects/FormatExample.pdf
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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 Tutorials on LaTex is available at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
Since you are in a group, if you don’t know LaTex, it is a great opportunity to learn it from your team
members!
A good practice of collaboration to finish this project is to setup meetings and search internet together
until finding sufficient materials (e.g., human-centered robots in real-life or from science fiction
movies). After the meeting, each team member reviews a portion of assigned materials individually
and independently (for example, a specific robot), and also prepare a report section on the reviewed
materials, using LaTex. At last, the team leader collects all the sections from all team members and
prepare a final report. For collaborative document preparation, “\input{}” can be a very convenient
LaTex comment.
The report of each team must be in PDF format prepared using LaTex and submitted to BlackBoard by
the group leader. The report must include a workload report in Appendix (agreed upon by all team
members), which states what each team member reviewed on this project in detail, along with a
percentage breakdown (totaling 100%).
Grading
Your grade (totally 100 points) will be based on:
 70 points: Your report (may vary among team members according to workload report)
 30 points: Your slides and presentation (same for all members in a team). Each group needs to
provide a 20 minutes presentation followed by a five minutes QA, discussing their discoveries
and comments on the assigned application. For fairness, the due time of presentation slides is
the same.
Note: Students in CSCI598B will be graded more strictly on quality of the reviews.