A Keepon is being used at Yale University’s Department of Computer Science and Child Study Center by Dr. Brian Scassellati and his students.  The Yale Daily News reports:

Bright yellow, with a cartoonish nose and pair of eyes and standing about 4 inches tall above its base, Keepon looks like a cross between a marshmallow Peep and a snowman. And Keepon has become a YouTube sensation — because this robot can dance.

Keepon can improvise to any song with a reasonable beat, said Brian “Scaz” Scassellati, a computer science professor who received tenure last week, exposing the robot’s inner workings while putting him through his paces. Partially built by former undergraduate Marek Michalowski ’02 GRD ’03 and imported from Japan, Keepon helps Scaz and his assistants — four graduate students and about seven undergraduates — study when and why humans identify with object motion.

Scaz’s team is probing a complicated question: What makes ascribe humans qualities to Keepon?

“It’s a blob that moves around,” Scassellati pointed out. But when Keepon starts to bop its “head” to pop music, many intuitively perceive it to be dancing.

“It really challenges you to define the boundaries of what you’re willing to attribute to something,” he said.

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