From February 12 to 14, 2024, the elective module “Social Robots” took place at the FHNW School of Business in Olten. This was the fifth time it had been held. This time, a GPT specialized in the topic was available for the first time. Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel repeatedly had it explain the facts and then made additions. Social Robotics Girl, as she is called, was also used by the students in their group work. In this way, they benefited from the lecturer’s knowledge without having to search for the right text passages or call him in. Among the robots at the demo was Unitree Go2 for the first time. It stole the show from all the others, NAO, Pepper and even Alpha Mini. This was mainly due to its fast, fluid movements, its diverse forms of behavior and its surprising tricks. The robot comes from the Social Robots Lab privately funded by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and is called Bao (Chinese for “treasure, jewel”) by him. As in 2023, image generators were used to design their own social robots, this time mainly with DALL-E 3 because some of the students had ChatGPT Plus access. The sixth edition will take place in Brugg-Windisch from February 15, 2024. It will mainly be attended by prospective business economists (Photo: Armend Nasufi).
BY OLIVER BENDEL
