File:Roboticist John Siegel designing a robot body shell.jpg

English: Roboticist John Siegel, the leader of the MRISAR R&D team, seen here with the body shell of Chibi, a hand crafted interactive, bi-lingual, rail guided robot host prototype, created for public use in museum environments, which helps educate and entertain millions of people worldwide. For museum use the robotics are usually totally or partially open framed for educational viewing, which relates to STEM and STEAM, and are always especially designed with safety features and force limits. Some of the scientific disciplines used in the design of this robotic prototype are Mechatronics, Electromechanical, Mechanical, Electronics and Autonomics. Many of the robotics technologies that the team invents are used in both their museum exhibits and their humanitarian prototypes (like Rehabilitation Robotics for victims of paralysis) that have been presented before and/or published by leading organizations.

  This device was designed by MRISAR’s R&D team and fabricated at MRISAR, a family owned business in North Dakota. Everything from MRISAR is designed and prototyped by two generations of 4 family members, the youngest two Autumn Marie and Aurora Anne Siegel (who began their apprenticeship in robotics as preschoolers), along with their parents John Adrian Siegel and Victoria Lee Croasdell-Siegel. The team goals are humanitarian and educational uses for science, art and technology. The devices created by them are unique in the fact that they are handcrafted, not mass produced. This allows the team to create across a wide range of technologies, applications and elements of science and art. The public use robotic exhibits they create for museums and science centers around the world relate to STEM and STEAM. This two generation team has even invented robotic systems for NASA.
  In developing robotics related to interactive science and art technologies one important factor is how to relate to humans in a tangible way and to do this with a dedicated effort to balance notions of race characteristics, body and gender identification features and to not create stereotypes. To create a generic friendly personality all people can relate to as much as possible.  One aspect of this is to give the technology a face and general body form that people can identify to but to make certain it is not intimidating or biased or inherently to human. The Chibi robot is designed to be small and friendly and not look too close to human but still relatable to avoid the uncanny valley issue that can occur which robots that look very human but slightly and eerily different. Vibrant colors of lights create an understanding of fun aspects and the colors of the body of the robot are designed to be sensitive to a wide diversity of race characteristics. General details of arms, a body structure, eyes and mouth are evident but kept simple. Components range from black to silver (a basis of skin concepts). Eyes are large which also relates to a childlike appeal. Appendages are small to suggest a gentle nature.  A nose was skipped to avoid further race identification features. Glowing eye and mouth elements also are well outside of the possible human types since those elements in humans do not glow. Those glowing elements relate back to the changing colors of the top and base of the head which cycle though a range of colors. The voice of the robot is not overly high. The midrange voice suggests a friendly and reassuring non-intimidating quality. From a technical vantage this specific device combines electromechanical and mechanical engineered elements with travel limits and Boolean logic, logic circuits, interactive technology and photonics in a personable form of robotic art. The rail system it operates on is designed to relate to a current trend in making robotics devices that are capable of moving to a location of work without being an encumbrance to floor space.  
  This device was designed by MRISAR’s R&D team and fabricated at MRISAR, a family owned business in North Dakota. Everything from MRISAR is designed and prototyped by two generations of 4 family members, the youngest two Autumn and Aurora Siegel, along with their parents John Adrian Siegel and Victoria Lee Croasdell-Siegel. The team goals are humanitarian and educational uses for science, art and technology. The devices created by them are unique in the fact that they are handcrafted, not mass produced. This allows the team to create across a wide range of technologies, applications and elements of science and art. The public use robotic exhibits they create for museums and science centers around the world relate to STEM and STEAM. This two generation team has even invented robotic systems for NASA.
  Science in combination with art relate to a better understanding of engineering and technology. Through creating handcrafted elements of engineering based on bio-inspired elements and abstract reasoning such devices explore how nature develops engineered creative aspects that humanity can use for real world applications in science and industry. Such devices also serve as valuable elements of education. From a technical vantage this specific device combines electromechanical and mechanical engineered elements with travel limits and Boolean logic to achieve a goal of creating systems that can instantly adapt to their surroundings and also compensate for human user errors. Other key elements are observations of design standards such are compensation for mechanical shock load, derating electrical, derating mechanical, derating electronic and mechanical elements, analysis of materials, weight distribution and comparisons to human arm operating degrees of freedom. More images of the creation of this and other MRISAR robotic devices can be seen at mrisar.org.

The work of MRISAR’s R&D team has drawn world interest for the public-use educational robotic exhibit prototypes that they create and also for their humanitarian R&D that aims to improve the quality of life. Their work has been presented before and/or published and awarded by: the United Nations, NASA-Emhart, Stanford, Cambridge, ICORR Robotics conferences, ROMAN Robotics conferences, IEEE, Discover Awards, International Federation of Robotics, etc. The “International Federation of Robotics” annual publication on Service Robotics regularly lists MRISAR Institute of Science, Art & Robotics in at least ten categories of robotics. The publication covers major contributors in the field of robotics and within that coverage focuses on the diversity of robotics, worldwide uses for robotics, economic factors and projections. Most are industrial providers, but the publication also includes NASA and other renowned research elements that reach well beyond industrial applications. In the 2011 publication MRISAR was featured in an entire chapter. The publication picks one per year for special focus in a chapter and covers a multitude of ventures in the rest of the document.