On June 20th, I demoed the Scribbler robot to my two roommates, Jennifer and Helen. Both are female university students with no robotics or programming experience. I believe the robot I was using at the time was Wall-E. Because I had just received the robot, I hadn’t programmed anything complex, but I had the robot draw simple shapes (square, circle, triangle) and follow my roommates around. Initially, my roommates found the robot amusing, but lost interest more quickly than I expected. I think because the robot had limited activity it was less engaging than it is now. Jennifer actually thought the robot was cute and liked its round red body. Helen wanted to see it chase our cat, who was not amused. Both kept their distance from the robot and were nervous about breaking it, which is why I tried driving it closer to them. Both showed initial excitement that faded within 5 minutes.
