Bob Kuntz  Director of Operations and Innovation and Jennifer Bishop Online Services and Emerging Technologies Supervisor at Carroll County Public Library (CCPL) are using Pepper Robot as a teaching tool. Through Pepper Robot, they are introducing the community to practical applications for robots as well as showing them an engaging way to teach coding to youth and adults. Bob and Jennifer shared with RobotLAB the positive experience of having Pepper in the library. These are their thoughts. 

"We are beginning to see robots introduced in a variety of public spaces, such as our local grocery stores. Our goal is to support a broader understanding of positive interactions with robots, their strengths and current limitations, and how the underlying technologies work.

Pepper visited all six CCPL branches in April for Meet Pepper demos and interacted with 400 community members of all ages in a variety of ways, including reading a popular children’s story, playing a Pepper (Simon) Says game, and having basic conversations. We also used these visits to gather ideas from our customers on how they envision robots being used in a public library environment. Customers came up with many ideas for Pepper to learn including reading and acting out nursery rhymes, playing games such as Red Light Green Light, acting as a greeter, highlighting books or upcoming programs, and teaching other languages.

We are also using Pepper to teach coding to youth and adults using Choregraphe, a drag and drop interface, to create applications to run on Pepper. We ran two Robo Dojo: Code with Pepper programs in May, with 10 participants each, where participants learned how to create speech-based interactions, add behaviors such as dancing, and add a tablet image. Six more coding programs are scheduled for the summer and we will continue these programs in the fall.

The community response to Pepper has been overwhelmingly positive, though we did have some curious but hesitant observers who weren’t initially comfortable interacting with a robot. One youth participant was initially hesitant to enter the room with Pepper, then after 10 minutes of watching he came in to write a program with Choregraphe along with his parents. By the end of it, he ran his program on Pepper, asked Pepper many of the basic questions, and asked to have his picture taken with Pepper.

Funding for the purchase of Pepper from the Maryland State Library and Institute of Museum and Library Services has supported the library’s strategic goal to connect the community to the potential of current and emerging technologies"

What an awesome job guys! Are you interested in having the Pepper Robot? ask for a Price Quote Request