Students collaborated with an AACC professor to make a robot that looks exactly like one in the film, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”

Mechatronics professor Tim Callinan has collaborated with more than 20 of his students since fall 2022 to build K-2SO, named after a droid from the movie.

Callinan also cited B2EMO from the “Star Wars” television series “Andor” as another inspiration for the robot project.

“I like to put stuff [like the robot] in the hallways [of the CALT building] because nobody knows we’re really around,” Callinan said. “Nobody knows what we do here. So [I thought] if I could put a robot in the hallway to talk to students, it might get them interested” in the mechatronics program. “That’s really the whole point.”

The robot uses ChatGPT Open AI to answer questions and have conversations with students, lighting up as it speaks.

When the student speaks back, K-2SO converts that spoken language into text, leading ChatGPT to generate a response, which the robot gives audibly.

The use of artificial intelligence “shakes things up,” according to Callinan. “[This] generation is definitely going to be surrounded by AI,” Callinan said. “It’s very interesting times. … If you had asked me, ‘Do you think [AI] would be as intelligent as it is [right now] Continued from Page 1 five years ago?’ I would have said, ‘Never.’ … I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

Callinan said he likes doing engineering design projects every few years because it “keeps things interesting” for him, adding that it’s a “win-win” for the students who work with him.

“I’ll have really, really good students … [who are] just blasting through the material,” Callinan said. “They just want to do more and … they get to work with me.”

Jonathan Gallegos, a third-year mechatronics student who has been working on the robot since last fall, said the project gave him “extra experience,” which is needed in his field.

Second-year undecided student Gavin Costa, who worked on the robot last spring, said he “jumped on the opportunity” because “it was really cool.”

“When I started on it, it was pretty rough around the edges,” Costa said. “It was really fun [and] I learned a lot. I never got that kind of handson experience working on something like that before.”