Professor Brendan McCane with the University's robot dog 'Scary Maclary'.
What ‘sleeps’ on his own mattress, can walk, dance and take photos? If you answered ‘Scary Maclary’ - the University’s robot dog - you’d be correct.
School of Computing Professor Brendan McCane says Scary Maclary arrived in Ōtepoti Dunedin about a year ago from a Chinese company called Unitree.
The Department ordered Scary Maclary for robotics research purposes to investigate the possibilities of robot learning in the real world.
Scary Maclary does not have one specific purpose but could potentially be used in dangerous situations where it may not be safe to send in a person, Brendan says.
“Our purpose, though, it to use Scary as a platform for fundamental investigation of learning in the real world, much like a young child or animal needs to learn about the real world.
Scary Maclary was purchased to help students explore the possibilities of robot learning in the real world.
“Those sorts of things which humans do very easily is actually quite difficult to get a computer to do.”
Prior to Scary Maclary, the Department had a wheeled robot which was built by one of the University’s technicians, however, there was a couple of issues with its hardware.
“We thought it would be cool to get a legged robot dog as a platform for doing research on.
“We’ve been specifically looking at using a specific type of learning called reinforcement learning.”
Researchers are trying to build systems that are autonomous and able to work themselves, he says.