Broader Impacts

Broader Impacts: Robots and Roboticists

Robots are embodied systems, meaning that they physically interact and change the world. This assignment spanning the semester asks you to introspect, discuss, and reflect on a robot of your choice, the engineers behind that robot, and the people or environment that robot acts on. In particular, this assignment asks you:

How does [this robot] affect you? the environment? society?

Part 1: Introspection

Due Sept 30, 2025

In this assignment, I’m asking you to select a robot that you’ll be thinking about over the course of the semester. The definition of “robot” here can be expansive – any technological system that can sense and physically respond to stimuli can be considered a robot for this assignment (so, an automated HVAC system is just as fair game as a Boston Dynamics Atlas as an industrial car manufacturing arm). When selecting your robot, consider the following:

  • Is this robot one that will hold your attention throughout the semester?
  • Is this robot one that you would be interested in talking about with your peers in this class?
  • Does this robot exist in an industry or environment that you also want to learn more about; or is it manufactured / maintained by a company / person you’d like to know more about?
  • When you think about this robot, do any strong feelings (positive or negative) come up for you?
  • Since this is a computation-oriented class; does this robot feature “intelligent” behaviors?

Once you have selected your robot, create an artifact to share with the class and instructor team that examines the following:

  • Introduce the robot – e.g., what is it called, what does it look like, who makes it?
  • Explain the robot – e.g., what does it do? where does it do it? what goal does the entity that makes it have?
  • React to the robot – e.g., have you encountered this robot? what feelings does it elicit from you?
  • Assess the robot – e.g., how proficient is the robot at its task? can it be used for other tasks? how does it impact the places / people it interacts with?

An artifact is any physical (e.g., sticky-note canvas; sketch model), virtual (e.g., powerpoint presentation; webpage), or mixed-media object that captures your thinking and learning process as you discover more about your robot. You are free to choose any way you want to represent your literature search, media deep dive, and brainstorming, but please keep in mind that the final artifact will be reviewed by the teaching team, who will be looking for elements of introduction, explanation, reaction, and assessment.

You are strongly encouraged to pull in academic literature, popular media, imagery, videos, and text-based resources as you create your artifact. Remember to cite your sources and provide media credits when appropriate.

To submit this assignment, upload a document containing your artifact or provide a link to your artifact (if you make a physical object, please submit image(s) or video(s) of your artifact) to Canvas. You will be assessed on completeness (2 points) and presence of each of the 4 prompts (introduction, explanation, reaction, and assessment; 2 points each) for a total of 10 points. It is expected that this assignment should take ~6-10 hrs to complete.

We will then present artifacts in class; your presentation and participation in small group discussions will account for another 10 points.

Tips for Selecting Your Robot

We will be talking about these robots a lot this semester; we can’t stress enough that you’ll want to pick a robot that is interesting to you, you think might be interesting to your peers, and one that is well-documented (so you have resources to draw on throughout the semester). Some examples of robots that at least meet the latter criteria include:

  • A class of industrial robot with many different instantiations, for instance: “warehouse robots” (e.g., Kiva systems, Amazon warehouses, Berkshire Gray Flexbots, Vecna robots, Locus robots), “self-driving robots” (e.g., Cruise, Waymo, Aurora)
  • A particular historical or long-lived robot, for instance: autonomous underwater vehicle ABE or Sentry, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, Mars rover Curiousity
  • Everday robots, for instance: modern HVAC systems, industrial manufacturing plants

You will likely enjoy this project more, if your robot or class of robot also has these features:

  • “Intelligence” or decision-making authority (not just a purely rote autonomous system)
    • Alternatively, if the lack of decision-making authority, in the context the robot is used, is precisely why it is interesting, then that’s great too!
  • A context that you find interesting/want to learn more about (for instance, if you’re excited about construction, you might choose to study the Reframe Systems robot; or if you’d like to learn about medical robots, perhaps the Davinci robot would be interesting to you)
  • A human-robot interaction angle (whether that means that humans and robots co-exist in context, or there is potential for a deeper societal implication)

Examples of robots selected during CompRobo 2024 included: