Assistive Robotics Competition Robowaiter: A New Approach To Socially Responsible Robotics Education

This paper reports on RoboWaiter—the first robot competition in the rapidly growing area of assistive robotics—that was conducted in conjunction with the annual international Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robot Contest in 2009. Organized with active participation of members of the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities, RoboWaiter’s overarching goals were to promote awareness of the needs of persons with disabilities while providing an engineering challenge to designers of all levels of skill within an atmosphere of friendly, teambased competition. An additional goal was to encourage students to think about responsibilities of engineers to society. In this paper we describe the RoboWaiter 2009 assignment and the associated engineering challenge, and we present results of our educational studies. We also discuss the potential of the RoboWaiter competition for developing and demonstrating assistive robotics technologies, providing a fruitful environment for robotics and opportunities for socially responsible education.