University Libraries hosts innovative animatronics course

My name is Thomas Tucker. I'm Associate Professor at School of Visual Arts, and this is a pilot course called Animatronics. We're trying to give robotic pieces of kind of narrative and also emotions. As we start to get these static forms to move, our mission is to not only provide the tools for making, but also to provide really robust support in the form of peer learning with student staff as well as expert learning from myself and my colleagues here at the library. We support all the avenues of the creation process, from conceptualizing to rough making, to refine making, and then back to final evaluation of a design. It's really accessible. Being able to take the elevator up to the fourth floor and get a screw driver if we don't have one down here. They have plenty of things that we can use for free. So it's the glue, it's again, the nuts and bolts. And then of course, being able to ask the associates that work there how something works. I think it's like the most ideal location for this class. The fact that the library has all of these resources available to us and the fact that we can have class in that same space is super ideal for, I guess since their inception have been places to convey knowledge. And knowledge today is much more, it's been transformed into digital means and technology. I mean, if it wasn't for the lab here, this class would have not probably taken place. But yeah, it's straight to know that all those resources are there for the class.