German edition of this international magazine also reports on research at the CITEC Center of Excellence

The humanoid robot Barthoc, developed at Bielefeld University, graces the cover on several international editions of last month's National Geographic magazine including Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand. In the new month of September, robotics research at Bielefeld University is also reported in the German edition of the National Geographic.

The reporter Chris Caroll carried out his research for the cover story 'Making robots human'“ in the English issue on the topic of androids. His travels took him to Germany, to the interdisciplinary Center of Excellence on Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University, where he was shown the robot head Flobi that can respond to human behaviour with typically human facial expressions. And he also got to know Barthoc, a 'robot from the waist up' with camera eyes and moveable facial features who is the 'older brother' behind the development of Flobi.

Caroll's report also took him to the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (USA) and the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Kyoto (Japan) where they explained their robotics research. However, both he and his editors chose the robot from Bielefeld for the issue's cover. Barthoc has now been given moveable hands to communicate with people, carry out commands, and respond with surprise, questions, understanding, or affirmation.

This month, you can read the report in the German edition of National Geographic. A special page is devoted to robotics research in Bielefeld: It provides a compact report on the robotic head Flobi and artificial hands – both important lines of research at the Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) Center of Excellence.

CITEC is being funded at Bielefeld University since 2007 as part of the Excellence Initiative. More than 30 research teams from computer science, biology, linguistics, psychology, sport science, and physics are focusing on four research areas: motion intelligence, attentive systems, situated communication, and memory and learning. CITEC scientists are aiming to develop technological systems ranging from everyday instruments to robots that are easy for people to use intuitively.

For further information in the Internet, go to:
www.cit-ec.de
www.nationalgeographic.de/die-welt-von-ng/androiden-aus-bielefeld