Plenty of people decide they can’t make it to their college graduation.
But few are offered an alternative like the one Carnegie Mellon University suggested to a pair of students due to graduate Saturday from the school's Online Hybrid MBA program -- have a robot walk in their place.
A university that incorporates robotics into much of campus life will test another frontier Saturday by having its "TepperBot 3000" stand in for the pair who cannot be in Pittsburgh, picking up their diplomas for them while allowing the pair to experience sights and sounds from the event through the robot’s perspective.
Benjamin Harris, of Erie, and Matthew McElhaney, of Oklahoma City, are part of the second class to complete the Tepper School of Business program that combines online MBA classes with travel every two months for weekends of in-person instruction and interaction.
Mr. McElhaney, 32, is an analytics manager in British Petroleum’s Oklahoma City office, whose travel schedule would not allow him to fly to Pittsburgh. The Tepper School’s 12:30 p.m. diploma ceremony in Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum is part of the university’s commencement weekend.
As the event approached, Robert Monroe, the program’s director, contacted Mr. McElhaney with an odd-sounding idea."Bob sent me an email asking 'Would you like to graduate as a robot?"
Mr. McElhaney, originally from Allison Park, couldn’t resist. Nor could Mr. Harris, 32, a Green Tree native and a radiologist at Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie. He said his family already has attended more than its share of his commencements, starting in high school.
"I figured my family was pretty tired of me graduation from stuff, so I wasn’t planning to attend," he said.
But going as a robot would be another thing entirely.
"It's exciting and hilarious all at the same time," he said.
Carnegie Mellon is known internationally for robotics research and education, so robots over the years have come to seem almost ubiquitous, from the “roboceptionist” inside Newell Simon Hall to Scrabble-playing and errand-running robots in Gates Hall.
Robots have served in CMU commencements as bagpipe players and to deliver graduate names.
But the “TepperBot 3000” will be the first to walk in a CMU commencement, officials said.
The telepresence robot is familiar to many of the program’s students. Commercially built, it lets Tepper experiment with various practical applications including linking online students at networking and other campus events.
On Saturday, it will easily be the skinniest graduate in the hall among some 300 or so business degree candidates, including about three dozen from the Online Hybrid MBA program.
Its “face” is an iPad mounted atop a slender mast and can be adjusted to standing or sitting height. It moves on two self-balancing wheels similar to a Segway.
During the ceremony, the robot dressed in a cap and gown will make one trip for each student, both of whom will watch remotely on a computer, an image of their face appearing on the robot’s screen as it moves about inside the hall under control. At least that’s the plan.
But it will need some human help.
“It can’t actually climb the stairs up to the stage, so we’ll have to have somebody lift it,” said Mr. Monroe. “It will then cross the stage so the students can receive their diploma.”
Will it take the diploma from the dean? Sort of, since it has an attachment onto which the diploma can be placed. The school plans to mail the diplomas afterward to the students.
“They will be able to cheer and clap for classmates,” Mr. Monroe said. “They will be able to walk around and mingle.”
Could the robot have made thing easier for everyone involved by simply doing the coursework for the students?
“The automation is not there yet to actually pass the MBA program for itself,” Mr. Monroe quipped.
Nor are any of the professors robotic, he added, thus “keeping us all employed for a few more years.”
Bill Schackner: bschackner@post-gazette, 412-263-1977 and on Twitter: @BschacknerPG.
First Published: May 17, 2017, 4:16 a.m.
