Students from the University of Amsterdam won a robotics competition with a robot designed to mimic human fear.
When the robot — named “Phobot” — sees a larger robot, it reacts by spinning around in a gesture of anxiety. The intent is to use the robot as a tool to help children overcome fears, by letting the children watch as the robot gradually overcomes its fear of bigger and fiercer machines, according to a report in the Brisbane Times. Researchers put a short video of Phobot in action on YouTube.
Teams at the competition, which took place at the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, were all given a Lego robotics kit. Such easy-to-use tools are becoming popular in engineering and computer-science courses to try to attract more people to enter the fields. (Students at Spelman College, for instance, programmed robot dogs to dance to popular hip-hop songs.) —Jeffrey R. Young
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