Robotics and Design: An Interdisciplinary Crash Course

The authors designed and ran a crash course on emotional robotics involving students from both the Information Engineering School and the Design School of Politecnico di Milano , Milan, Italy. The course consisted of two intensive days of short introductory lessons and lab activity, done in interdisciplinary groups and supported by a well-equipped prototyping and modeling lab. People from very different backgrounds had to work efficiently together, going from problem setting through the demonstration of the physical implementation of an object able to show four different emotional states. Both teacher evaluation and questionnaire-based feedback from the students show that it was successful and useful to set up this type of intensive experience in which students share their abilities to achieve a common goal. Key aspects for the success of the course were the short time the students had to reach a well-defined, yet general, goal, the students' ability to find efficient ways of cooperating and sharing their competences, students' motivation to arrive at a working prototype, and the strong support from teachers and lab personnel.