ENGINEER SPOTLIGHT: Noel Sharkey - Jolly Good Fellow
Noel Sharkey’s academic career path has crisscrossed
an impressive range of disciplines: engineering, computer
science, philosophy, and psychology, among them. But
it’s for his work in robotics that he’s
best known. Indeed, the University of Sheffield computer
science professor is arguably the United Kingdom’s
most famous robotics expert—thanks to the power
of the “telly.” For years, Sharkey was chief
judge on the popular BBC TV series Robot Wars, which
featured robots battling it out in gladiator-style tournaments.
“It gives me a lot of street cred with the kids,”
Sharkey says of the show.
And that’s important to Sharkey these days. Although
he remains a busy researcher and academic—he also
edits three academic journals, including Robotics and
Autonomous Systems—much of his time is now spent
popularizing engineering and science. As the senior
media fellow for Britain’s Engineering and Physical
Science Research Council (EPSRC), “my job is to
engage the public through science and engineering,”
he explains. Sharkey’s mission is to raise public
awareness that science and engineering are not only
crucial to society and its future, but they can be fun
and interesting, as well. And he focuses primarily on
youngsters.
That’s a critical audience in a country where
enrollments in engineering nose-dived some years ago
and have since remained flat. According to Britain’s
Engineering and Technology Board, engineering enrollments
at U.K. universities peaked in the early ’90s
at around 21,000, then fell to around 15,000 or 16,000,
where they’ve since remained. But during roughly
that same period, overall university enrollments jumped
40 percent. And while students have been drawn to some
areas of engineering, like civil engineering, other
disciplines, especially electrical, have continued to
slump since the bursting of the IT bubble a few years
ago. At Sheffield’s computer science department,
enrollments are down by two thirds from a couple of
years ago. That’s alarming because, as Sharkey
notes, “we were the cash cow.” He fears
the decline results from engineering “being seen
as very dull and boring.” That’s not only
a worrisome perception problem but a potentially dangerous
one, he adds, given that in developing countries like
India and China, engineers are seen as heroes and engineering
schools’ classrooms are bulging with eager students.
That’s why Sharkey thinks shows like Robot Wars
are valuable—they help kids see engineering as
something cool. The teams of “geeky kids”
who built the warrior robots “turned out to be
role models.” The program received only several
dozen contestant applications in each of its early seasons;
by its fifth year, however, it was regularly receiving
several thousand applications—an indication that
geek-chic can take off.
Rachel Bishop, EPSRC’s public engagement manager,
says the council is delighted with Sharkey’s work
so far. In Sharkey, she says, with his engineering and
science know-how and his flair for showmanship, the
council thinks it has found the perfect person to bring
science and technology to the masses. “Noel is
an ideal ambassador,” Bishop says. “He has
a unique talent for getting people enthusiastic about
robotics research. Noel’s charismatic approach
to engaging people with science is exactly what our
senior media fellowship scheme is all about.”
From Rough Road to Robots
Sharkey, who turns 57 this month, certainly knows
something about being bored in school. He grew up in
a working-class area of Coleraine, Northern Ireland,
when the local schools were less than desirable. “I
went to a crap school,” he recalls. Few of the
teachers were qualified, “and they hit us all
the time.” At home, however, Sharkey was very
studious. His father—who died when Sharkey was
11—was an invalid who constantly had books delivered
from the library, and he shared them with his son. But
in the sterile, uninspiring atmosphere of his school,
Sharkey showed little inclination to achieve, and his
teachers considered him a dolt. When he was 14, his
headmaster laughed at him when he said he played chess.
He wasn’t laughing after Sharkey beat him in a
match in front of the entire class. So bored was Sharkey
at school, he tended to be a troublemaker. “I
was a nightmare, actually,” he says. “When
I left, no one complained.” And he was only 15.
Sharkey, today, with his trim white beard and long
white hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail, looks not
unlike an aging rock star. And that’s not far
off the mark. Although he held down a variety of menial
jobs after leaving school, he was an accomplished guitarist
who played in number of rock bands. Eventually, Sharkey—who
has always been interested in psychiatry—trained
as a psychiatric nurse. Then a girlfriend, who was taking
qualifying exams for college, urged him to take them,
as well. “The minute I started, it just felt right.
And that came as a surprise to me.”
Ultimately he got an honors degree in psychology at
Exeter University and went on from there to study computer
science. Next came research stints at Yale and Stanford
universities in the United States and a return to Exeter
where he researched linguistics in the computer science
department.
Although his Ph.D. is in experimental psychology, Sharkey
is a chartered electrical engineer and a fellow of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers, as well as the
British Computer Society. Given his interests in areas
as diverse as cognitive science, engineering, computer
science, and linguistics, it’s not surprising
that he gravitated toward robotics. Sharkey built his
first robot in 1989: a machine that could scoot down
corridors, avoid people, and turn corners.
One of his more recent robots, eMo, which has red rubber
tubing for lips and camera lenses for eyes, has an expressive
face and can mimic such human emotions as happiness,
sadness, anger and surprise. It greets and delights
visitors at Thinktank, a science museum in Birmingham.
One of Sharkey’s main research interests is how
humans interact with robots; others include biologically
inspired robots, cognitive processes, and machine learning.
He met his third wife, Amanda, while an undergraduate
at Exeter. She’s now a senior computer science
lecturer at Sheffield, where she also focuses on robotics,
and they’ve written a number of papers together.
Sharkey also has five daughters, ranging in age from
38 to 11.
Though clearly besotted by robots, Sharkey thinks there
are limits to what robots can accomplish. He scoffs
at the notion that robots will ever be consciously aware.
His own eMo can only mimic emotional expressions. Yes,
he’s suitably impressed by advanced robots like
Sony’s Qrio, a robot “companion” that
can walk, climb (and descend) stairs, dance, recognize
voices and faces, converse and express “emotions”
using movement, expressions, and lights. But no robot
can truly think or feel, he says. “Basically,
they’re totally stupid.” Humans, Sharkey
says, “are biological machines, and the word ‘biology’
is key to me.”
A Better Mix
Clearly, though, robotics is on the verge of making
some stunning breakthroughs. But Sharkey fears that
the United Kingdom could be left behind if its students
continue to shun engineering and science.
He thinks one reason for the decline is the way engineering
is taught in the United Kingdom, with a heavy, early
emphasis on theory and math. “Kids come in and
they want to design and build cars, but instead they’re
fed theory and hard math. And they say, ‘What
the heck is this?’” Degree programs should
be made more palatable and exciting early on, Sharkey
says, with more hands-on learning to go along with the
theoretical so students can more easily see how it relates
to real-life applications. “We need to get out
the idea that engineering can be creative—and
then make it so. Somehow, we need to teach innovation.”
But Sharkey also realizes that few schools have either
the time or the money to reshape their curricula. “So
we could use a government initiative.”Sharkey
also takes a more long-term view toward revitalizing
engineering enrollments, noting that it’s best
to capture the imagination of budding engineers when
they’re as young as 10 or 11. Toward that goal,
and with EPSRC funding, he runs a series of robot-control
and construction competitions for children and young
adults. A recent one was in Rotherham, a hardscrabble
area outside Sheffield. About 2,000 inner-city kids
made and took home simple cardboard robots from kits
he devised that use a photoelectric sensor. Many of
these kids are considered unteachable, “but to
me, they seemed happy to learn. They didn’t see
me as a teacher.” Moreover, constructing robots
engages and entertains youngsters, which makes learning
easier.
Schools, Sharkey believes, need to accommodate students
who don’t necessarily do well using the one-size-fits-all
model of learning from books and classroom discussions.
Sharkey worries that too many disengaged, and thus undiscovered,
smart kids are falling through the cracks. He recalls
boyhood friends who were as smart or smarter than he
was who never learned how to learn and have been largely
unemployed their whole lives. “I was just lucky,
really,” he says. Schools find it easier to deal
with gifted students, but they’re mostly children
from middle-class backgrounds whose parents push them
to excel. The naughty kids may be just as bright, Sharkey
says from experience.
But we need to find new and less traditional ways to
reach and teach them.
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