A new permanent exhibition on robotics at Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie

Changed on 19/05/2021

The new permanent exhibition called Robots at Cité des Sciences opened on 2 April 2019. Spanning 900m² at the heart of the exhibition space, Robots challenges the very definition of robotics. Three Inria researchers, Serena Ivaldi, Jean-Pierre Merlet and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer were closely involved in designing this exhibition.

Modern-day robotics has conjured up many stereotypes, fears and utopian ideals, driven by the burgeoning literature and film culture. The mission of this exhibition is to present real, operational robots and increase visitors’ awareness of their relationship with these unique machines.

This project at the Cité des Sciences required assistance from thirteen academic and industrial partners, including CNRS, Eiffage Énergie Systèmes, Dassault Systèmes, KUKA (a global automation company) and FANUC (global leader in industrial robotics and digital control). The exhibition is the result of this collaboration between public research and private sector companies.

After lending support to the Terra Data exhibition at Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, and the Digital Sciences space at the Palais de la Découverte, Inria is again contributing to this Universcience exhibition through contributions from three researchers:
   •   Serena Ivaldi: research coordinator with the Larsen project team, a project combining robotics and psychology, this researcher studies how robots interact with humans both physically and socially.
   •   Jean-Pierre Merlet: the project team leader Hephaistos has been working to develop high-precision industrial and therapeutic robots for over 20 years.
   •   Pierre-Yves Oudeyer: the senior researcher for the Flowers project team is a pioneer in “artificial curiosity”, an artificial Intelligence approach that prioritises intrinsic motivation mechanisms to help humans and machines progress in autonomous learning.

The ROBOTS exhibition

The exhibition is made up of five major sections presenting issues related to humanoid and non-humanoid robots and the questions raised by their integration in our daily lives:
   •   A robot or not? What makes something a robot?
   •   Draw me a robot. The basics and main features of robotics.
   •   In the robot lab. How does a robot learn?
   •   Live with robots? Robotics around the world
   •   The robotics trade show: professions in the field, latest news, etc.

The exhibition is presented in three languages (French, English, Spanish) and is recommended for children ages 10 and up.