Dr Dimopoulos' dancing robots go to Bulgaria

3rd SEE - Science Festival

Dr Kostas Dimopoulos, Lecturer at our Computer Science Department and Adrian Solomon , Researcher at SEERC visited Burgas in Bulgaria in order to participate in the 3rd SEE- Science Festival where Dr. Dimopoulos had one more opportunity to present his dancing robots. The event was held on 26-27 September 2013 in the Cultural Centre Sea Casino of Burgas in view of the spectacular Burgas bay area. The concept of the 3^rd SEE Science Festival was ‘SEA OF SCIENCE - explore the sea of science with us’.

Within the framework of the SEE-Science project Dr Kostas Dimopoulos has developed an activity for children and young adults where robots dance with humans. The activity was inspired by the popular TV show “Dancing with the Stars”, a dancing competitive game where popular persons (in our case, robots) are matched with dancing instructors (in our case, pilot participants), who after a training period they compete in front of an audience. A number of differently configured robots programmed using Microsoft Kinect - which enables robots to respond to certain movements of the trainer - are used and each participant pairs off with one of the robots. During the dance, the participant changes postures, making the robot appear to dance as well. This activity was designed to boost the young peoples’ interest, and especially women, in science through interactive robot games and activities.

This was the third of the four Science Festivals to be organised in total within in the framework of the SEE-Science project. The first festival was organised by SEERC and NOESIS in Thessaloniki last October.

Dr Dimopoulos presented his dancing robots with great success in all three SEE-Science Festivals that have taken place so far.

Our reserch centre, SEERC, is a partner for the SEE- Science project.

More info: https://seescience.eu/festivals