Festival Sports Robot Petting Zoo Highlighting Humanitarian Robotics
A the first Robot Petting Zoo in South America, children played with micro solar-powered robots, outside. The robots are assembled, and after some exposure to sunlight, they can move autonomously. Photo: Field Innovation Team and St. Peter-James Children’s Home.
Romibo “played” with the children in their classroom. Romibo is programed via an iPad and spoke Spanish to the children. Photo: Field Innovation Team and St. Peter-James Children’s Home.
Field Innovation Team, a crisis response organization that helps communities develop disaster preparedness programs, brought its Robot Petting Zoo to South by Southwest Interactive Festival for March 15-17.
The Robot Petting Zoo, a first for the festival, features ground and aerial robots that attendees can touch, operate and even program. The FIT team and robot operators describe different ways robots have been used during disasters and how beneficial they can be for crisis response and recovery.
“The presence of RPZ should help raise awareness of how automated machines are assisting in various sister relief efforts,” says Director of SXSW Hugh Forrest. “And, it will raise this awareness in a SXSW kind of way — which means lots of hands-on fun, excitement and engagement for all the registrants who stop by this area.”
The zoo has humanoid robots, aerial robots that have flown over disasters to gather valuable data, and multifunctional specialized robots that can, for instance, fly while 3-D printing.
“FIT believes in the utility and necessity of using robots for good and brought together this collection to demonstrate and rethink how robots can be used to help in crises,” says Desi Matel-Anderson, founder of FIT. “Humanitarian and natural disasters present many challenges. The Field Innovation Team believes that a multi-solution approach, which includes the use of technology like robots, will bring inspiration, empathy, and collaboration with survivors building back more resilient communities.”
Last summer, FIT first brought a robotics petting zoo to South America to encourage children children to learn about science, technology, and engineering during a border crisis.
