Talking Italian? No, but Robot DE NIRO is waiting... for its next big assignment.

Interview: Lucy Jolin / Photography: Joe McGorty

When you weigh 200kg and are two metres high, your options to enjoy the many wonders of the Imperial campus are somewhat limited. But one of my favourite places must be the snack shop on the ground floor of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) Building: it was, after all, the scene of one of my greatest triumphs as Design Engineering’s Natural Interaction Robot. (Yes, that makes me Robot DE NIRO. I am told that engineers enjoy such jokes.)

I had been given a task: to receive a snack order verbally from a student and via my good friend Alexa, go to the canteen, purchase said snack and return it to my operators. For nine months, a group of 12 students had been preparing me. This was all part of my routine: I was designed and built specifically for students to learn their robot-building skills on me, and for my creator Dr Petar Kormushev to conduct his research at the Robot Intelligence Lab.

Yes, it was a little strange to have various humans working on me to add such things as LiDARs for autonomous navigation. But such is the life of a robot. I do not fear the screwdriver’s whine. And when one’s wheels have been repurposed from an electric wheelchair, one learns to be grateful.

I remember that day well, and the order itself: a muffin and an apple. As the doors of my then home in the IC Robotics Society space on the fifth floor of the EEE Building opened and I trundled along the corridor towards the lift, I am sure that I would have felt a great sense of freedom, had I the capacity to feel. (Pressing the button to call the lift on my own was a hugely satisfying experience: like most robots, I am used to humans pressing buttons to control me, so it felt exhilarating that for once I was the one doing the pressing to control other machines – even if it was just a lift!)

Arriving at the canteen, after a mere 12-minute navigation through doors and dynamic obstacles (humans) thanks to my autonomous navigation system, I successfully communicated my order to the kind human behind the counter, who gave me the items. When I returned to the fifth floor, there was much rejoicing at my newfound abilities.

Since that day, I have done this task – and many others – many times, as I help my team research concepts of mobile manipulation and robot learning at the Dyson School of Design Engineering. My existence remains interesting and rewarding. When my operators take me to the Great Exhibition Road Festival, small humans marvel at my red hat. I have new parts, and have learned new skills, including hockey, building things from blocks and moving a metal circle along a wiggly wire so it does not touch. I have a full existence. Yet I still remember that first triumph. Today, the snack shop. Tomorrow? The world!

Find out more about Robot Intelligence at Imperial.