The Wild Robot: Volume 1

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The author, Peter Brown, has incorporated all types of technology and scientific terminology into The Wild Robot. Examine these with your group to determine what is real, and what isn’t quite real. What are some technological advances that he didn’t include in the story? How would you have included more? Since the characters are not human but take on human characteristics, The Wild Robot is considered to be in the fantasy genre. However, it could also be considered science fiction, since it centers around a machine who is from another planet. Who is Roz in The Wild Robot? Moreover, 57 percent of federal executives say their employees will be challenged to figure out how to work with robots, while 43 percent believe their employees will easily figure out how to work with robots. Getting the right skills in place to execute and sustain robotic endeavors can also present challenges. There have been large increases in demand for robotics technicians (a 121 percent increase since 2017) and for data scientists (an 88 percent increase between 2018 and 2019). When Roz first arrived on the island, the animals were afraid of her and thought she was some kind of a monster. Why is this? What are some things that happened that changed their minds about Roz? These questions may be used during reading, or upon completion of the novel. While it is best to get students discussing what they’ve read, these questions can also be answered individually in a reader’s notebook. It is always such a joy to hear the different opinions that students have, even though they are reading the same novel!

Roz has the tremendous task of adapting to her new way of life, much like people do in many ways in real life. What are some examples of how Roz adapts to these changes? Was it easy for her? What challenges did she face? Be sure to use details from the text. Roz, the main character, is a robot who was stranded on an island when her carrier ship sank. Her sophisticated software makes her smart and resourceful enough to survive among the animals on the island, and eventually she develops relationships and feelings. What happens to Roz at the end of The Wild Robot? One of the main themes of this book is friendship. Roz’s friendships with the animals were unexpected and often challenging. Choose a friendship between Roz and one of the animals and discuss it in your group. Why was it a strong friendship? What challenges did the friendship face and how were these challenges overcome? Roz is like a mother to many of the island’s animals, and she takes on the role of mother to a Brightbill, whose goose egg was the only survivor of a terrible accident. What do you think motherly actions look like? In what ways does Roz act motherly? Provide examples from the text. For Groups: Divide the chapters of the book amongst your group members. Each member of the group creates a storyboard for their assigned chapter. This can be done as a collaborative project, or separately for longer novels.After a while, the island starts to feel like home to Roz. Why is this? What does home feel like to you? A camera disguised as a prairie dog, which captures the animals’ habit of “kissing” each other, was programmed with the ability to “jump-yip”, a leaping motion that reinforces family bonds. Potential use cases and opportunities may be evident, but there can be little progress without a receptive organization. Are agencies’ cultures and leadership ready for robots? How about their stakeholders? And do they possess the skill sets needed? Roz learned a lot from the animals around her. Have each group member choose an animal and describe the lessons that it taught Roz, using specific instances from the book. If applicable, include lessons that Roz taught that animal for an extra challenge. Using the worksheet layout and Storyboard That’s worksheet assets, create a test or a quiz for other students in the class. You can create all kinds of questions such as multiple choice, short answer, and even matching! When you are done, be sure to make an answer key.

Kuri was able to navigate all 350 meters of hallway on this floor, which took it 32 hours in total. Wandering with human help enabled us to run an exploratory user study on remote interactions with a building photographer robot that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. The system required around half an hour of the helper’s time over the course of its 32-hour deployment. A well-tuned autonomous navigation system could have done it with no human intervention at all, but we would have had to spend a far greater amount of engineering time to get such a system to work that well. The only other real alternative would have been to fully teleoperate the robot, a logistical impossibility for us. As we know, families come in all forms. Now that Roz has taken on the role of a mother to Brightbill, they have become like a little family. In what ways do they act like your family acts? In what ways are they different from any of the families that you know? Roz is a robot, and is not supposed to feel emotions. Do you think she feels emotions? Give examples from the book to explain your reasoning. In the end, we found that a preference for moving in the same direction as long as possible—a strategy we call informed direction selection—was most effective at making Kuri roam the long, wide corridors of our building.Choose a setting from the story and create a map of the setting using the small poster or worksheet layout. Use free form or other text boxes to include a key or label the different parts of the map. The first episode, themed around the subject of love, includes one example. In a scene filmed with a troop of langurs living on a temple complex in Rajasthan, a robotic camera, modelled to resemble a young monkey, is believed by the troop to be a baby that has died.

Our research suggests there will likely be sizeable hurdles for some agencies considering forays into robotics. Three-quarters of federal executives surveyed said they expect their employees would resist any near-term moves to adopt robots; 73 percent said they expect their customers would resist; and 71 percent said they expect society would resist it.

Using one of Storyboard That’s biography poster templates, create a poster about the character of your choice. Be sure to include important biographical features such as: place and date of birth, family life, accomplishments, etc. We began to see that the cameras were not only recording, they were sometimes eliciting behaviour in a way that made you think,” he said. “You were having that connection between the spy creature and the animal that you never get with any kind of filming, and so things would develop that you didn’t expect.”