On the assembly line at Steelcase Furniture, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, you may see a scene out of a science fiction movie: human workers working alongside Baxter, an anthropomorphic robot, complete with animated eyes projected on to a tablet. Baxter is what’s called in computer science circles “a co-bot,” designed to work closely with, and even interact with human workers. Alison Sauppe is a graduate student with the University of Wisconsin Computer Science Department. She spent last summer interviewing workers at Steelcase about their electronic co-worker. It’s all part of a joint UW – MIT project funded by the National Science Foundation to study robot-human cooperation.