Note: our chapter is finally "getting with the program",
namely the robotics and automation program. Despite the fact
that many of our members surely have robotic cars with GPS
navigation to whisk them automatically to their
destinations, we have never provided GPS coordinates for our
meetings. With this announcement we will begin to correct
that deficiency.


            IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
                Central New England Chapter

                 Wednesday, March 24, 2004
                Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM
                      Program: 6:30 PM


                HRI: Human-Robot Interaction
        Properties of Robotics, Principles of Design

                       Jonathan Klein
                     Principal Designer
           Director of Usability | Accessibility
                     iRobot Corporation


This will be a joint program of the Education Society, the
Neural Networks Society, and the Robotics and Automation
Society. Note that it will take place at the iRobot
Corporation in Burlington, MA, not at our usual location.


                          ABSTRACT

For decades now, immobile, expensive robotic arms have
become standard issue on factory floors. Intelligent mobile
robots, however, have remained on the periphery of view --
capturing the public imagination, but remaining largely in
research labs and on movie screens. Yet in just over a year
useful, affordable, mobile robots for consumers have made
their way off the screens of science fiction movies and into
the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Even Pepsi is
making commercials featuring floor-cleaning robots. At the
same time, ultra-rugged PackBots are exploring caves in
Afghanistan and buildings in Iraq on CNBC, saving lives and
keeping soldiers out of harm's way. Flying drones figured
heavily in last year's war in Iraq, for better or worse.

This is not a test.

The Pentagon's Future Combat Systems has called for a third
of all vehicles in the military to be unmanned within 10
years. They're not just curiosities, they're here to stay:
Real products doing real work for real people. Hoover, Toro
and many others are getting into the consumer robot game.
Big military contractors are already in the mad rush for
defense contracts. Almost overnight, real, useful robots are
becoming part of the culture. What's the key to their
success? How do you design a user interface for a mobile
robot? What is a robot, and how does its unique development
path and unique ability to go out into the real world make
designing user experiences for them such a challenge?

This talk is designed to present a model of human-robot
interaction as distinct from the field of Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI) but drawing many models and lessons from
it. Differences, as well as similarities to the design of
HCI will be discussed, and a number of famous robots from
iRobot and elsewhere -- as well as some remarkable
prototypes rarely seen outside laboratory doors -- will be
shown.


                         BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Klein is Principal Designer at iRobot, a company
setting standards and records for sales and rave reviews of
mobile robots in the consumer, military, and industrial
domains. A former art director and graphic designer, Mr.
Klein has spent 11 years as an HCI researcher and
practitioner, and the last five years designing at the human
interface to robots for such diverse purposes as vacuuming
up dog hair, disposing of bombs, search and rescue, and
enraging robotic dinosaurs in the playroom. He has
contributed to the design of the interaction and user
experience for robots including the Roomba, Roomba Pro and
Pro Elite Robotic FloorVacs, the PackBot, and a variety of
other robots, including the affect-sensitive My Real Baby
doll. Mr. Klein graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. degree
in Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Graphics at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and received his M.S.
degree from the MIT Media Laboratory.


                    DIRECTIONS TO iROBOT

iRobot Corporation is located just off I-95 in Burlington at
63 South Avenue. For those with GPS receivers, the
coordinates are approximately as follows:

	N 42 28.954'	W 71 13.251'

For directions and a map see:

      http://www.irobot.com/corp/p08d.asp#main

Contact info if you need help or have a question:

  Neural Networks Society members or Education Society
  members should contact the chapter chair, Rob Reilly, at
  reilly@media.mit.edu

  Robotics and Automation Society members should contact the
  chapter chair, Rich Maynard, at chair@robotics-boston.org