Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel’s privately funded Social Robots Lab (SRL) has been home to the Unitree Go2 since December 2023. It goes by the name Bao (Chinese for “jewel” or “treasure”). Heise writes in an article: “The basic model of the Go2 is equipped with a lidar on the head, which has a hemispherical field of view of 90 degrees vertically and 360 degrees horizontally. The minimum range of the lidar is around 5 cm. This enables the robot to navigate independently in the terrain, recognize obstacles and also avoid them. The robot runs at a speed of up to 2.5 m/s and is extremely agile. … A 2-megapixel camera is also on board, which can be used to take snapshots and videos.” (Heise News, July 27, 2023; own translation) The information systems specialist and technology philosopher is keen to make progress in the field of animal-machine interaction. He defined this field of work in 2013 in his article “Considerations about the Relationship between Animal and Machine Ethics“, based on the concept of animal-computer interaction pioneered by Clara Mancini. Since then, he has developed several artifacts and concepts in this area, including Robocar (modeling for animal-friendly cars), LADYBIRD (prototype of an insect-friendly vacuum cleaner robot), HAPPY HEDGEHOG (prototype of a hedgehog-friendly vacuum cleaner robot), and ANIFACE (concept for a system with facial recognition to identify brown bears). Bao will be used to test the reactions of domestic, farm, and wild animals. The aim is to make robots not only human-friendly, but also animal-friendly (Photo: Frank Graef).
BY OLIVER BENDEL
