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"Tweenbots" Test NYC Pedestrian-Robot Relations
MBCook recommends Kacie Kinzer's tweenbots page, which documents some of her experiments with small, anthropomorphized robots that need help. Kinzer is writing a thesis (at the Center for the Recently Possible) centered around investigating whether people in New York City will help a cute little robot to get where it's going. "Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal."
> "I've always wondered if I took a postcard, wrote someone's name and city to be delivered to, and gave it to a random person. Would it ever get there?"
That experiement has already be done. Read about Milgram's "Small World Experiement." It's the experiement that originated the phrase "Six Degrees of Separation." Milgram did a rigours version of "write a name and city on a post card and ask a random person to help deliver it."
Eventually it ought to, geocachers do the same thing with trackable items. :)
While Springfield Elementary is a public school -- technically making Groundskeeper Willie a government employee -- it's a bit of a stretch to say that "the government" invented that phrase.