Henrik Lunds presentation

Henrik Lund from the University of Southern Denmark is giving a very exciting presentation based on his work with educational and leisure robotics, especially with Lego Mindstorms Robots. He talks about minimalism principles in the design of robots.

Self-reconfigurable robots (a sort of robots made of spheres which can move in different directions adopting different shapes), his work in Africa in the Ilembula Hospital in cooperation with University of Joensuu. the idea was to help people to create their own artefacts for the community using "robotics building blocks". This same concept was applied for obese children in china to motivate them to become more active. The idea is to have the devices on the ground, like a mosaic, so the kids jump on them allowing movements in the game, fostering interaction.

The future is to have this different tiles communicated to each other through wireless communication and how to use those tiles for therapeutic purposes, for instance, for injured people they can measure the pressure of their steps in order to know if he's doing it right or for senior citizens and cognitive games for autistic children.

Finally, he also talked about the leisure use of robots and his collaboration with the artist Funkstar de Luxe