Robot shower

The robots have arrived at Arcada, and we wanted to show them off!

The AFORA research team held a robot shower (baby shower but for robots) event to show off the new humanoid robots at Arcada.

The event was laid back and held in F367, where we served some cake and bubbles at an event that resembled something of a crossover between a traditional baby shower and a birthday party. Baby showers are held before the baby arrives, and indeed some of the bots part of the research project had yet to arrive at the time of the event. The CSJBot Amy Waitress as well as the Sanbot Elf humanoids, had however arrived prior to the party, so we felt a birthday-type theme was just as fitting!

Among the balloons and music, provided by the ever-so cute Sanbot, we did find some time to show some of the features of the bots, among others, interactive questionnaires asking about how the guests felt about the party, as well as asking some of the attending guests to partake in a dance.

Kick off for Afora

The event served as a kick off event for the research project, albeit many hours of research has already been put into choosing the robots Arcada can find the best uses for. After several pages of whatsapp discussion with factory employees, retailers and pre-sales assistants, we felt Amy and Sanbot to serve our purposes best.

First in Finland?

We believe that we are the first ones to have these social/humanoid bots in Finland, and we intend to use them as tools to keep us on the forefront of research and education with humanoid robots. These bots have a very wide variety of use cases, many of which you will be able to learn more about right on this site, as soon as we find the time to publish news and resources for anyone interested.