During Australia’s federal election campaign, our politicians are travelling the country to meet with businesses, often with complimentary announcements of funding. With a double dissolution called, it means both houses of parliament, the House of Reps and the Senate are campaigning for re-election.
Today Victorian Labor Senator Kim Carr, met with CQ University and got introduced to Australia’s first humanoid robot. Known as “Pepper”, in March, CQUniversity’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Pierre Viljoen said the Peppers will be an asset to the Mackay Region as well as the University’s new Mechatronics Engineering program.
Pepper is the first humanoid companion that can interact in the real world and will provide an interactive customer experience. What’s a robot without internet connectivity. Pepper can be asked almost anything and will return answers to almost anything you can ask him. Earlier this year, CQU let the robot roll on over to six, one-hour ‘Try Programming with Pepper’ workshops as part of the Festival’s Street Science.
Labor will be hoping their education policy and focus on computer programming in schools, will create a nation of people who understand problem solving, automation and seeing a physical representation of that code makes it easy for many to understand. While you can make the same argument with a modern-vending machine, its never quite as sexy as a humanoid with an iPad strapped to its chest.
