Introduction

You have just read and seen robots that work in the proximity to humans. Now that you have some background, it’s
time to build your own!
For this week’s lab, you are going to design a physical prototype of a robot that interfaces with humans. The
prototype you will build should be just that, a prototype. Your prototype does not need to work, nor should it be
expensive (you are limited to $25 total). The goal of this assignment is two fold:

• You will be building something tangible. This is the first step to designing an active robot.
• As Cory mentioned during his talk, his first prototype was a blue trashcan with eyes! Due to the small budget, this will force you to look for other materials to construct your robot (Cardboard, sticks, old cans, etc.).

What to Build

Think about the type of robot you want to make; is it a mobile robot like Kuri? Is it an industrial robot like Baxter?
What is the purpose of your robot? Does it need to talk to humans or just work with them? What type of functionality does
your robot need? What social responsibilities / ethics does your robot need to follow? If you need some help getting started,
think about the following sectors: entertainment/gaming, healthcare, food, retail.

Time to Pitch

Once you have built your prototype, you would probably want to get funding for it. How would you get funding?
One of the most common ways is talking to investors. You may not have access to any real investors, but our Slack
community can work as a group of people who could be potential investors! Come up with a quick elevator pitch (about 5 –
10 sentences) to pitch your idea to a group of investors. Post a picture of your prototype along with your elevator pitch in
our Slack community under the channel #hri.

Secure Funding

Now that you have pitched your idea, here comes the hard part- getting funding. We do not have any real funding,
but we can do some fun virtual funding. To fund a project, add a money emoji reaction to the project indicating if you were an investor, you would fund this project. The more money emojis, the more funding!

Press Release (i.e. the best part)

Now that the “investors” have voted which project to fund, the person/team with the highest amount of emoji’s will
have a write-up posted in our slack community (in #announcements) along with a quick bio of their team and project. Work
hard, but most of all, have fun!