This full paper presents the validation and results of a low cost scaled car platform into a project-based course in order to teach AI self-driving cars topics for undergraduate programs in Universities. This is an elective course of the Mechatronics program at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) whose second edition of the course was developed during January through March 2020. The main objective of this article is to present the results of the second edition of the project-based course, which details the integration of a low cost robotic platform with an embedded board used to execute computer vision and AI algorithms. Using a robotic platform allowed the students to focus on the application of the algorithms in a real scenario and learn from experience instead of using only simulation platforms. The proposed course aims to introduce the students in self-driving cars topics, and apply the theoretical concepts to develop an autonomous car using the robotic platform. The topics of the course are structured in five categories including Automotive Design Concepts, Localization and Navigation, Computer Vision Techniques, Artificial Intelligent Techniques and Simulation Environment; and is divided into fourteen theoretical lectures and five practical laboratories. The project-based course is aligned with four Students Outcomes from ABET accreditation entity for undergraduate programs in order to reinforce their abilities to work as a team, self-learning, hands-on experience, develop prototypes, testing in real scenarios, and learn basic scientific writing and presentation skills. The results of the second edition of the course show that the students enrolled were able to accomplish the development of a self-driving car capable of completing a lap on a racetrack autonomously only using image processing and AI algorithms. In comparison with the first edition of the course, the inclusion of a scaled car as a base for the project avoided mechanical problems with the chassis and allowed the students to focus on the sensors integration and algorithms programming.

In the 1560s Philip II of Spain commissioned the realisation of a “mechanical monk”, a small humanoid automaton with the ability to move and walk. Centuries later, we present a Catholic humanoid robot. With the appearance of a statue of a saint and some interactive features, it is designed for Christian Catholic users for a variety of purposes. Its creation offers new insights on the concept of sacredness applied to a robot and the role of automation in religion. In this paper we present its concept, its functioning, and a preliminary test. A dialogue system, integrated within the multimodal communication consisting of vision, touch, voice and lights, drives the interaction with the users. We collected the first responses, particularly focused on the impression of sacredness of the robot, during an experiment that took place in a church in Peru.

The programming field is mostly taught through visual programming interfaces complemented with traditional computer hardware such as mice, keyboards, and others. Careers of the future will require strong programing skills, and nowadays around the world these skills are developed since childhood. In developing countries such as Peru, the programing skills are mostly acquired during university, and, in high school, the students use robotics kits that could be expensive to afford for public institutions. From the research literature it is observed that the concept of tangible programing instead of visual virtual programming could have a strong impact in the learning experience, particularly for children around six years old. The present work details the design of a platform called FYO (Follow Your Objective), a low-cost tangible programing platform composed of a physical intuitive programming board, puzzle-based tangible blocks and a zoomorphic mobile robot, which could be used for children around six years old, in order to teach and improve programing skills. The preliminary experiments and result of platform are evaluated and presented; results show that a tangible platform puzzle-based can improve children programming skills. Finally, future work for improvement is discussed.

In the design of robots that have to share spaces with humans, design plays an important role in the acceptance, and sound is one further aspect that should not be neglected, in order to facilitate interaction and minimise repulsion. Following a previous research in which an uncomfortable noise from a robot was identified, we present an interaction study in which the same noise was tested in order to measure the effect on proxemics, as opposed to a silent condition and to a different version of the sound, masked with ambient music. The results obtained with the participation of 60 subjects show the effectiveness of the mask in avoiding the negative effect of the noise.

This paper presents a basic course to teach the basic concepts and applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to undergraduate students. Using the design thinking methodology, the objective is to design and implement a UAV to solve a real problem. This course intends to match engineering and business by designing UAVs for significant applications. This proposal aims to initiate the students into basic concepts of aeronautics, mechatronics and human - centered design. First, students learn about current UAVs applications worldwide and they are introduced to the methodology of design thinking in order to properly design solutions with UAVs for real problems in the national context of Peru. Then, students acquire basic theoretical and practical knowledge on aerodynamics, mechanics, electronics and sensors, systems integration, basic control algorithms and programming to design, implement and test a UAV. This course encourages students to interact as an interdisciplinary team, think outside the box and design to solve problems that affect Peru and the entire world. The participants are evaluated before and after the course to determine how their knowledge about UAVs and design thinking has changed.

Security is one of the possible fields in human society in which robotics can be applied. Human guards usually perform a range of tasks in which a robot can provide help. A security company collaborated with us in the design and development of a robot that should serve in patrolling large indoor areas, interacting with humans, welcoming, providing information, and be a telepresence platform for the human security guards. In this paper we present a preliminary experiment which involved this new robot in two roles: security and guidance. The former being important especially during night, and the latter being common in daytime, when guards are usually interacting with people who ask them information. The results of the experiment with 55 participants showed how the perception of the appearance of the robot and its effectiveness are influenced by its behaviour and its related perceived more authoritative or kinder traits. These results provide useful indication for the employment of robot guards in a real world situation.

Nowadays, the development of robotics demands a holistic approach in which engineering and non-engineering fields work together, exploiting their skills and unique knowledge in order to address modern problems through innovative solutions. Under this premise, in 2013 the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, known as PUCP, decided to aim its efforts to promote the synergy and collaborative work between engineering and humanities with the purpose of achieving research and educational goals for the institution and its students. In this paper, the initial stage of this program is presented through the development of robotic projects by the faculty of Engineering, in collaboration with the faculty of Art and Design. The development process of 5 robotics projects during the last 3 years are presented and analyzed. These projects comprise a sand cleaner robot, a social designed social sUAV, a desktop robot, conceptual designs of social robots, and a humanoid Robot. As a result of the work between engineering and Art students, research and educational goals could be achieved, reflected in paper and patents generation, along with institution recognition and students professional career development. The projects' results and lesson learned during this experience between engineering and humanities are presented and discussed.

The use of robots as educational tools has demonstrated to be highly effective for attracting students to science and technology related academic fields. Although these academic fields are very important, we believe that other subjects such as language, music, arts, literature, history, etc., are also essential for future generations. For this reason, the goal of this research is to explore the potential use of robots as educational tools for non-technology related fields such as history. We discuss an alternative approach for designing robots inspired in traits and characteristics of historical figures that play an important role in the topic to be studied. We present some examples of conceptual designs of robots inspired in ancient gods of Mesoamerican and South American cultures. We discuss how some of the traits of ancient gods could serve as inspiration for the appearance design of commercial robots, and how these robots could be used in educational environments to attract the attention of students to learn about this history topic.

The objective of this research is to investigate the personality factors that influence human decision-making in particular scenarios such as during the interaction with a robot or a human counterpart. We conducted the experiment in a public environment in which participants were approached by either a human or a robot agent. The agent asked a verbal request in a direct or indirect manner that participants could accept or decline. We used the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI) in order to measure the personality traits of the agent that had a strong influence in the acceptance decision of the participants. Our results suggest that within the context that our experiment took place, the humanoid robot was more effective at influencing human-decision making than the human agent, in particular when indirect request was used. The personality traits that made the robot to be more effective were: `extrovert', `enthusiastic' and `sympathetic'.

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the first robotics education workshop in which children and parents interact by experimenting with concepts of robotics. Unlike traditional robotics educational workshops that are targeted to children only, our initiative encourages children and parents to interact as a team and learn through ludic activities using a robotic kit. Therefore, apart from presenting the advantages of robotic educational tools, the concept of parenting styles is introduced in order to explore their relationships with participants learning. Analysis results describe child's performance and evidence of the influence of parenting style in the child's learning process. Our approach establishes a precedent to design and implement innovative workshops to encourage and motivate students in order to gain interest in science and technology through robotics, and their parents to use positively the different aspects of parenting styles in the learning process of their children in these workshops.

Due to their wide functionality in military and civil applications, small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) are becoming more commonly operated in public places, causing direct and indirect human-robot interaction. As these particular robots promise widespread integration into humans' social contexts, it is important to understand how people will perceive them if positive interaction wants to be achieved. In this video, we introduce a sUAV for social environments. "Daedalus" is a quadcopter that has been designed with a special focus in expressing emotional states through interaction features, such as head movements and eye color variation. In order to analyze the robot's capacity to express emotions and people's perception of these states, an experiment was conducted. The sUAV is initially located in a stationary module, the subject approaches the robot, and sits down in front of it, maintaining an interaction distance between 0.5 - 0.7 m. The robot performs 4 different expressions combining head movement and eye color display. After each expression, a psychologist asks the subject two questions: How do you feel? and: What do you think the robot is feeling? For evaluation, subjects must select one of seven cards associated with basic emotions to express and evaluate emotions according to the questions. The preliminary results of this experiment are presented in this video.

This paper presents an interface for enabling a sUAV robot (Daedalus) to communicate and simulate emotional states. As significance is the result of the interpretation of emotional states, an experimental study was performed to evaluate and recognize emotion-state responses from people when interacting with the sUAV. Four expressions were programmed combining Daedalus' interaction features such as head movement and eye color display. During the assessment, subjects were asked to recognize the significance of the expressions performed by the robot and assign an emotional state of the robot through card selection. Our research aims to investigate the impact of simulating emotional states in robots, and its potential during interaction. Results presented are part of an experimental study for setting future exploratory research concerning human-robot interaction.

This paper addresses the problem of mental fatigue caused by prolonged use of Brain Machine Interface (BMI) Systems. We propose a system that gradually becomes autonomous by learning user preferences and by considering error perception feedback. As a particular application, we show that our system allows patients to control electronic appliances in a hospital room, and learns the correlation of room sensor data, brain states, and user control commands. Moreover, error perception feedback based on a brain potential called error related negativity (ERN) - that spontaneously occurs when the user perceives an error made by the system - was used to correct system's mistakes and improve its learning performance. Experimental results with volunteers demonstrate that our system reduces the level of mental fatigue, and achieves over 90% overall learning performance when error perception feedback is considered. Note to Practitioners - This paper suggests a new approach for designing BMI systems that incorporate learning capabilities and error perception feedback in order to gradually become autonomous. This approach consists in learning the relationship between sensing data from the environment-brain and user actions when controlling robotic devices. After the system is trained, can predict control commands on behalf of the user under similar conditions. If the system makes a mistake, user's error perception feedback is considered to improve the learning performance the system. In this paper, we describe the methodologies to design and build hardware and software interfaces, acquire and process brain signals, and train the system using machine learning techniques. We then provide experimental evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of this approach to design BMI systems that gradually become autonomous.

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the first robotics education workshop in which parent and children interact by experimenting with concepts of robotics and develop problem solving skills. Unlike traditional robotics education workshops targeted to children only, our initiative encourages both parent and children to interact as a team and become interested in science and technology. Post-workshop analysis aims to describe the relation between the filial interaction of the participants, the level of learning and new skills obtained during the robotics workshop. With this new type workshop we expect students to gain more interest in technology and their parents to encourage their children toward engineering and science majors.