St. Regis students learn about robotics

ST. REGIS – Students at the St. Regis schools were introduced to two very different types of characters at an assembly last week designed to introduce them to a growing technological field of study.

One type was a human. The other types were robots. Together they formed a team that put on a show about robotics including several designs that were able to navigate, stand up and dance under their own power and perform other feats that amazed the enthusiastic crowd.

Under the control of professor, inventor and author Hunter Lloyd, the robots moved solely under the direction of Lloyd’s voice commands and the occasional tapping of controls on the robot’s head.

Lloyd performed as a stand-up comedian with acts such as Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Allen and has been featured on MTV, VH1 and The Comedy Channel before he returned to school where he studied engineering and computer science. These fields of study eventually led him to the study of robotics.

Lloyd is now a Professor of Robotics at Montana State University but he hasn’t lost his knack for making audiences laugh. Now he does it with his robots. Lloyd also demonstrated other technology to the St. Regis students that is still in development such as 3-D cameras that can detect the presence of an individual and project them live onto a screen.

Particularly dazzling for the students were the antics of Looney the Robot. Looney was able to perform a wide variety of tasks including sitting down and standing up, kicking a plastic cup off the table and nearly a dozen different dance routines.

According to his website, Lloyd performs to students to “inspire them to follow their dreams in the fields of math and science.”