Alexis Block

Alexis Block's research has been featured on several television programs, radio programs, and podcasts:

12 & 13 January 2022, PM Wissen, Servus TV: broadcast in Germany and Austria HuggieBot was featured in a short sequence in a film titled ``Wie funktioniert Unterricht per Avatar? (``How does teaching via avatar work?'')

21 July 2021, Women's Wealth: The Middle Way: Alexis was interviewed as the featured guest on the podcast. Her episode is entitled "Inventing her way to success", and features a roughly eleven-minute interview with Alexis.

12 July 2021, The Next Byte: an engineering podcast by Wevolver aired an episode discussing Alexis and her HuggieBot research called "26. Hugging Robots, Scalable Solar Fuel, & Non-Invasive Spinal Implants"

8 July 2021, The Current: A radio program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did a story about hugging and interviewed Alexis to learn about HuggieBot, why she made it, and how it would succeed after the pandemic.

7 April 2021, Trending in Enducation: Alexis was the featured guest on the podcast episode "Making a Robot that Hugs with Alexis Block" to talk about her recent HRI publication "The Six Hug Commandments: Design and Evaluation of a Human-Sized Hugging Robot with Visual and Haptic Perception"

26 May 2019, STEM on Fire: Interviewed Alexis on their podcast episode "Nothing Cooler than Being a Woman in STEM" to encourage high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen an sophomores to study STEM

16 June 2018, NPR: HuggieBot was the first question discussed during the Panel Questions segment of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" program.

15 June 2018, Paul Ross Show on TalkRadio: Alexis had an 11 minute interview with Paul Ross. It aired between 4:30-5:00 and begins about 8 minutes in.

 

A selection of Block's research  featured in news articles:

ETH Globe (Swiss Magazine), June 2021: Robots for comfort and counsel  also available in German as Der Roboter – dein Richter und Tröster (article begins on page 25 for both)

Beobachter (Swiss Magazine), 3 June 2021: Ein Plädoyer gegen die Vereinzelung

Entrepreneur.com, 10 March 2021: "What to do when people laugh at your idea"

TechXplore, 11 February 2021:  "HuggieBot 2.0: A soft and human-size robot that hugs users on request" 

SWR TV (German TV News Station), 16 January 2021: filmed and aired an interview with Alexis and Katherine featuring a live demo of HuggieBot 3.0 

PM Magazin (German Science Magazine), December 2020: published an article titled "Touched by a Robot" about Alexis and HuggieBot 2.0

The New York Times, 16 October 2020: "When We Can Hug Again, Will We Remember How It Works?"

Double Helix Magazine, 15 October 2020: "The Comfort of Robot Hugs"

Stuttgarter Zeitung, 6 December 2019: "Ein Roboter spendet Trost"

The Robot Report, 27 May 2019: “ETH Zurich Researcher Works to Build Human-Machine Trust, One Robotic Hug at a Time"

NowThis Future Media, 30 August 2018: Created a short video using experimental footage of HuggieBot 1.0 with over 250,000 views

The Times, 12 June 2018: "Feel the Love with a Robo-Hug That's Better Than the Real Thing"

Geek.com, 12 June 2018: "This Robot Just Wants a Hug"

NBC News, 11 June 2018: "Why scientists are teaching this burly robot to hug"

Digital Trends, 7 June 2018: "Forget Roomba, your most important house robot could be the one that hugs you"

Boing Boing, 6 June 2018: "Why these scientists are teaching robots to give good hugs"

IEEE Spectrum, 5 June 2018: "The Importance of Teaching Robots to Hug"