Fun with Science

Some of Curiosity Lab’s shining stars visit Peachtree Corners Library to show practical lessons about STEM.

By Arlinda Smith Broady

Adults often think that kids automatically know a lot about technology. Just because they know what all those weird emojis on your phone are supposed to represent and they can text faster than they talk, much of the new stuff out there is just as amazing to them as it is to the rest of us.

That’s why the folks at Peachtree Corners Curiosity Lab decided to pack up a few goodies — two very awesome robots — and head over to Peachtree Corners Library to show some young patrons how the center of Silicon Orchard is growing and setting the standard in several industries.

One of the coolest things at Curiosity Lab — one that’s too big to fit into the library — is the shuttle that circumnavigates Curiosity Lab’s 1.5-mile autonomous vehicle test track along Technology Parkway. Launched on Oct. 1, 2019, two Olli electric vehicles will someday shuttle Peachtree Corners residents and workers to shops, office buildings and more.

“Have you guys seen the trams, the shuttles on Technology Parkway?” Louis Svehla, communications director for the city of Peachtree Corners, asked the several dozen children present.

As hands shot up, he told them something they probably didn’t know.

“Those are driving themselves,” he said. “Nobody’s driving those and that’s part of the test vehicle that we’re using. …We have cameras, we have radar — you guys heard of radar, right? — and radio waves. You turn on your station and you can listen to radio; it runs on radio waves. And now we have a brand-new thing that’s called LIDAR. What that is, really, is the radar that allows a car to see everything around it, up and down,

Louis Svehla speaking to kids about Curiosity Lab at the Peachtree Corners Library.

and can even tell what is coming in front of it, and whether it’s a car, a person or an animal.”

The surprised looks from the children and the adults in the room prompted Svehla to invite them to come try the shuttle.

“Hopefully you guys will come by Curiosity Lab and take a ride in some of our vehicles and see everything that we have going on there,” he said. “These shuttles run every Monday through Friday, from 10 in the morning to 4:00. I don’t have to be there for you to ride it. If you go sit by one of their stations, you can get on and ride the shuttle.”

“Cool!” one of the kids said in a stage whisper.

But Svehla warned that it wouldn’t be like a speedy amusement park ride. “When we first started, it only went five miles an hour,” he said. “And now, thanks to all of our testing, we have it up to 12 miles an hour. And then hopefully in the next few months, we’ll have it up to 25 miles an hour.”

That didn’t seem to phase the audience. The idea of a driverless car still sounded like a great adventure.

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Robot Stars

Then Svehla introduced the star of the afternoon: Pepper, a humanoid robot who’s been programmed for human interaction. Pepper was not working up to her full potential that steamy July afternoon, but she showed that robots have come a long way since the no-name Robot Model B-9 on Lost in Space.

“Pepper’s not as good as she should be right now because we continue to work and program her,” said Svehla. Her malfunctions were evident when she failed to give a high five but she made up for it with a fist bump and, later on, some dance moves that looked a little like twerking. Her speech was limited to answering a few rudimentary questions, but at least she never uttered, “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Robots like Pepper have been used in airports and are still in development by companies like T-Mobile — and who knows? They may soon get to the level of Rosie on the Jetsons. (I’m still waiting for a robot to clean my house.)

Perhaps the biggest star of the day was Gita, a storage robot that allows you to put stuff inside and can follow you around. Svehla said it was originally designed for use in airports, but it moved too slow for the quick pace and busy shuffling of passengers.

“You could put your luggage or different things [inside this compartment] and when you run to your plane, it could follow you,” said Svehla. “They found out very quickly that that doesn’t work when there are a whole lot of people around running to their planes. So what they do with this one, and what we use it for sometimes, is we take it out to Town Center when we have Fun Days or Kids’ Days — and we can give out water and popsicles and other stuff with this.”

He demonstrated how the robot “learned” who its person was and would follow them wherever they went. The children had a blast playing a technology-enhanced game of “Follow the Leader.”

At the end of the day, the demonstration was a fun way to encourage kids to get interested in STEM subjects and, perhaps, one day test out their start-up invention at the hometown laboratory.

For more info on what’s happening at the Curiosity Lab, visit curiositylabptc.com. ■