JackRabbot 2 is Stanford’s friendly new campus-roaming social robot
Boasting a human-friendly appearance, with a two-fingered arm, squat body, and large cartoonish eyes, you could be forgiven for thinking that JackRabbot 2 is a character from some as-yet-unannounced sequel to Pixar’sWALL-E. In fact, it’s a real robot created by researchers at Stanford University — which was first shown off at an on-campus event this week. The goal of the JackRabbot 2 project (known as “JR2” by its creators) is to build a robot that’s not just capable of navigating around the sprawling Stanford campus, but to build one that is also able to do so while surrounded by people....