Laura Boccanfuso, one of our graduate students, is featured on this WISTV news story along with her robot Charlie:

Charlie is short for Child Centered Adaptive Robot for Learning Environments, designed by a USC graduate student to help kids with autism.  "She is designed to promote basic communication skills," said Charlie creator Laura Boccanfuso. "Two of the most important communication skills are imitation and turn taking." Charlie is designed to be handled by kids but sometimes kids play hard, which is why she has some break away features. "We want the robot to just be sitting on a table, and allow the child to explore her, touch the eyes, touch the nose, and the hands and get to know her so she and he feels comfortable interacting with the robot," said Boccanfuso.

Full story at WISTV.com. The College of Engineering coverage of this story. medGaget blog coverage. USC News coverage.