We are a group of academics, teachers, researchers and educators based in the Capital Region of New York State. Our goal, funded by the NSF, is to build a community of people interested in using Social Robots as a platform to deliver an education in Computer Science.

To revolutionize teaching in Computer Science we need to explore platforms of delivery that are exciting, interesting to study, and provide mechanisms for teaching abstract concepts in a practical, hands-on way. Robotics presents a practical platform on top of which we can deliver an education that addresses the central needs of CS and Engineering graduates of today and tomorrow.

Social Robotics looks beyond the purely physical or software engineering challenges, toward the variety of roles such robots can play in a modern society, the challenges of technology interacting with humans, and the ethical issues such interaction implies. By expanding the topic into these social areas, we hope to draw in students from beyond traditional Science and Technology backgrounds, and disseminate key CS education to students from non-CS majors.

We will hold four open workshops, to bring together stake-holders, students and industry to outline a program in Social Robotics. We are committed as a group to exploring the range of teaching practices and synergies amongst our existing courses, to discover and exploit a novel pedagogical approach to teaching fundamental CS principles through Social Robotics.