Understanding the Draw to Robotics

Introduction

My research topic was originally based on measuring the back emf of a motor to aid in the control of the chassis drive motion, but due to difficulty of topic and lack of resources, I have switched my research topic to look at the implications that our society inherently places on gender and technological subjects, specifically robotics. It was noticed, during work on another field robot, in which we drove a Clearpath Husky throughout the campus and worked on it out in the open, that the majority, if not all, of the individuals that stopped to talk to us about our robot were male. I want to look into what aspects of the robot and the crew working with it increases the number of females to stop and take interest in it. There is a large ongoing push to draw more female participants into the STEM research areas, and I would like to figure out what might cause interest in any age of female. These aspects include physical appearance of the robot, the current motion and action of the robot, along with the looks and actions of the crew working with the robot.

This subject is not directly connected to the success of our cornhole robot, but as the spirit of the competition is revolved around human robot interaction, and is meant to be used within human entertainment, it is useful to understand what aspects better appeal to the other half of the population that does not always have a strong presence within these technological communities.

Related Work

There has been a lot of work done that looks into why there is such a disparity of females within robotics, but the majority focus on young girls and trying to attract them early on. I have looked into some of these studies and have found some useful knowledge and characteristics that I need to be watchful within my own little test.

Sullivan and Marina[1] focus on the middle school and high school VEX competition, and finds that it is the level of confidence in technical fields of female members that really is the attribute that most closely correlates to the females level of activity on the project.The second article [2] tries to use the more social aspect of young girls to draw them into robotics. They presented a robotic challenge focused on Human-centered robotics and telepresence robotic design. They found that being able to personalize their robotic system along with a problem focus on human interaction were strong motivators for the young girls. Then the third paper [3] looks at the implementation of domestic service robots, and into the differing expectations and reactions of the homeowners. This study was not focused on the different reactions between genders but rather on how to best introduce robots into a family home.

Most of the research done is focused on getting female interest in their early years, and not necessarily to reach out to older females. My work will look into how to potentially spike the interest and confidence of women in general to talk about robots as they pass by on a college campus. The work that has been done thus far is useful as it points towards what are roadblocks faced, and what can draw females in. Though most of the subjects are young girls, they are still subject to the same cultural expectations as older women. As highlighted in the referenced work, I will focus on how to facilitate the broad spectrum of personal confidence to approach this subject, and how to make the robotic system seem like a tool that can be personally useful and intriguing to them.

Work Referenced:

[1] Sullivan, Amanda, & Bers, Marina Umaschi. (2019). VEX Robotics Competitions: Gender Differences in Student Attitudes and Experiences. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 18, 97-112.[2] Gomoll, Andrea, Hmelo-Silver, Cindy E., Šabanovic, Selma, & Francisco, Matthew. (2016). Dragons, Ladybugs, and Softballs: Girls' STEM Engagement with Human-Centered Robotics. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 25(6), 899-914.[3] Forlizzi, J., & Disalvo, C. (2006). Service robots in the domestic environment: A study of the roomba vacuum in the home. Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART Conference on Human-robot Interaction, 258-265.

Experiment

My experiment is based on the environment that I first noticed the pattern that only men took vocal interest in my team’s robot; and that was just sitting out by the sidewalk working on my laptop with the robot sitting near by. I replicated that same scenario with three different situations. The first and second observation period I would sit by my robot, and would mindlessly work on my laptop, looking like I was actively debugging something, and take note of the population that would stop by and take various interest. For the third period, I would drive the robot around still carrying an open laptop and would take note the actions and interest raised by those around me. It was only for the first situation that I would use the robot used for our cornhole competition; for the second and third situations I would use a Clearpath Husky as it was a commercial robot so it looked nicer and was better at driving outdoors.

I gathered observations on the participants that gave clear verbal or physical interest. I was primarily interested in the gender, age and type of comments made. I did not take pictures of the participants or let them know that they were a part of a study. When asked what I was up to I gave the explanation of my ME599 class, stating that I was working on having the robot move to GPS waypoints while gathering wifi strength data.

The evaluation criteria was if there was directed conversation to me or my helpers about the robot or if there was some sort of action taken to show obvious interest in the robot. This did not include the many side glances and interested looks that many people gave me as they walked by.

Observations and Results

The cornhole robot configuration used for situation 1 testing

Situation 1

I located myself right by the library lawn and one of the main street walkways so that I would optimize the amount of traffic that passed by. Out of the hour session, I was not approached by a single person about the robot. I found that a lot of people looked interested and inquisitive about the robot, but no one went as far as to approach me. People seemed too shy and did not want to interrupt whatever they thought I was doing. That is why I think if I am driving around, there will be more public interaction.

I think this speaks volumns to the findings and call to push for youth confidence in the subject, as the issue I was running into with this test was not a technical issue but that of unspoken social interaction rules. I attempted to not look too busy and terrifying to come and talk to, but that was not enough to overcome the general social awkwardness of randomly approaching a stranger.

Friends helping me with taking the Husky outdoors

Situation 2

For the second round of the testing, I did very similar actions as the first round but I did change the sitting location, I was not alone, and I used the Clearpath husky instead of the cornhole robot. It was in this situation that I had the most people come and talk to us. As I changed more than variable it is tough to directly point to the aspect that had the largest effect. It was still found that it was males that made verbal contact and were the ones that asked the question even if there was a group of people and there was at lest one female present.

Observations noted throughout a 2 hour session of the 2nd situation

Official stock photo of a Husky by Clearpath

Situation 3

I had hoped that this round would provide and draw more participants, as people in motion tend to be more willing to handle changes and interruptions and a moving robot is cooler than a static one. For this round my friend drove the robot around with the game controller while I was carrying an open laptop slowly walking behind the robot. For this we walked all around the front of the library and around the western side of Rodgers Hall. Situation 3 was more successful than situation 1, but still we only had one obvious show of interest as a student came along side of us and recorded it driving on his cell phone. The interesting thing about this is that this was the first sub 25 participant to show interest and it was done in stereotypical millennial style, headphones in and without conferring with us took a video of the robot, then walked away.

I had expected to get at least a lot more participants, and hopefully that within that multitude that there would be at least one ore two women that showed interest so that I could better hone in on what drew their interest. I found that I had overlooked the many unspoken social ques that occur out in public spaces around strangers. the people that were bold enough to talk to us about the robot were either older men who seemed to already be in a talkative mood or who had knowledge and worked on something similar. This was not a well planned out experiment and could have used a couple more of various situations to gather more understanding of people's attitudes. I definitely got many more remarks with the clean and well built Husky robot. It is an overall more aesthetically pleasing robot and looks cooler as it has a lidar and GPS sensor mounted on the top.

I was hoping also that as I am also a women, other women would feel more comfortable to come up and converse with me about the robot. I did not see any obvious evidence that that was actually the case.

At our competition, we were in a very public place; a large indoor atrium within one of the main university engineering buildings. There were people walking past for class, studying at tables near by, and some did in fact stop and watch the competition. We were one out of 18 teams, so when people showed interest it was much more due to the overall event. A couple of female students did interview our team, but that was for a class assignment. This occurred twice.

Conclusion

In this research work, I studied what drew interest to a robotic system. Factors of interest are based off of the robot and the state at which it is being presented along with the type of person that happens to be passing by. the aim of this study was to better understand why there is not as much obvious female interest shown towards robotics. This is a popular study as there is a higher push to get young girls into the STEM fields. I wanted to expand this type of study to all women rather than just young girls.

there were three situations during of which qualitative observations were taken of those that showed obvious interest in the robot. The first situation was stationary sitting by our cornhole robot out in public. The second was the same setup just with a commercially made robot, and the third was with this same commercial robot but driving it around in public. It was noted the gender, age and comments made by each participant.

It was found that the appearance of the robot is important for drawing enough interest to start conversation with strangers. It was also found that it was mostly older men that showed interest in the robot, and those who were younger, did show interest as they were familiar with robotics already. I did not have a single female come up and talk to me, though the overall number of participants was low.

This was a helpful study only in that it better aids to the future design and implementation of Human Robot Interaction studies. I did not implement or change our robot or competition style based off of any finding from this research. This work would come very handy if I were ever to showcase our system in an open house and wanted to draw a wide array of interest.

Future Work

Further work would be to run longer experiments, and to have more situation types to better narrow down what peaks people's interest, and when is a the easiest time to break beyond social barriers and talk with strangers.

Report abuse