What would it be like to build the first robot that could interact with people? Learn about robots that might someday communicate with people at KNME’s Science Café on Saturday, June 21, from 10 a.m.-noon at the Explora Museum, 1701 Mountain Road in Albuquerque’s Old Town.
Guests will watch a short TV segment from award-winning series NOVA featuring engineer Cynthia Breazeal’s work in the field of robotics. Then they will participate in a hands-on discussion with guest speaker and noted robotics expert Herbert Tanner, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of New Mexico.
Prof. Tanner was awarded the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in the field of Robotics, by the Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) division of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) directorate. The CAREER is NSF's most prestigious awards program for junior faculty members.
In this field, only three CAREER awards were given nationally in the fiscal year 2005. Tanner's proposed research aims at developing swarms of heterogeneous robots that could automatically plan their cooperative actions towards a common objective.
This 16th KNME Science Café is presented with support from New Mexico Tech and Lockheed Martin/Sandia National Labs. Admission to the event is free, but seats are limited. Please contact Rose Poston at 277-2396 or rposton@knme.org to RSVP.
Media Contact: Evy Todd, (505) 277-1218; e-mail: etodd@knme.org