Meet Wellesley’s new residents, Lava and Sky

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by Rama K. Ramaswamy

The Wellesley Free Library’s NAO robots were named Lava (red robot) and Sky (blue robot) by 10 year-old Oliver, who won the naming contest after a month of children dropping off their name choices in the WFL’s drop box. The WFL hosted over 120 people at their naming event this past weekend. The 2 NAO Robots introduced themselves and proceeded with a short demonstration. According to Children’s Supervisor, Emma Weiler, “the robots showed off their push-up skills, danced, told jokes, played Simon Says, and did Tai Chi in sync. We were trying to show the range of things you can program the robot to do. With enough patience, you can program them to do just about anything!”

If that wasn’t enough, Lava and Sky let attendees know about the library’s upcoming classes, including robot programing. “Registration was available at the event and is now open,” said Weiler. When Weiler first heard about the robots coming to WFL, she said she was unsure of how this might go, especially with respect to her.

“Me? Learn programing?” she said. “Isn’t programming neurotically writing lines of code and hours of re-reading the code to search for that misplaced comma that is messing up your program?”

Worse, Weiler was assigned to be on the Robot Committee, a group of librarians charged with learning how to use and program the robots and develop curriculum. “This gave me a chance to really work in-depth with the robots,” said Weiler, “and I discovered that I loved it! The programming really is quite easy. It can get complicated and involve traditional programming with Python coding, but it doesn’t have to. After a month, we have programmed the robot to have conversations, walk around, even play Simon Says.”

Weiler said that she finds the “immediate feedback” she gets from testing her programing skills with the robots to be “really satisfying,” as it’s “easy” for her to see what is working, what’s not, and how she might adjust the programing.

She added: “the robots are fun to watch, but they are even more fun to program and control yourself. Now I find I am so enthusiastic for the classes to start, so I can show other people how easy programming can be.”

One parent remarked, “I heard that these robots can be programed by STEM students to help teach and communicate with students on the Autism spectrum.”

Another parent said that she cannot wait to see how these new additions to the WFL will assist with “digital literacy”- which is defined by US Digital Literacy as the ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information.

For more information and to see the video link, go to: https://youtu.be/HkACyxTeqYU.