Pepper can tell you all about the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater — and how you can become a citizen scientist and lend a hand with the center’s research.

When 6-year-old Michael McConnell of Davidsonville visited the facility’s Reed Education Center on a recent Friday, Pepper was standing near the door to greet him. Michael asked Pepper to tell him a story — and he did, all about the research and activities underway at the center, accompanied by a slideshow presentation on a tablet attached to its torso.

Pepper is a robot, one of a dozen being employed by the Smithsonian Institution and dispersed over six locations, including two at the Edgewater center.

The devices, donated by Softbank Robotics, are being used by the institution as another tool to engage visitors.

During Pepper’s interaction with Michael, the the 4-foot tall humanoid danced with the boy and taught him how to play an invisible musical instrument, making noise to accompany the drumming motions Michael’s hands made.

He and his mother Anne McConnell came to the center just to see Pepper — “He’s really excited,” she said — but after their encounter he went to go check out a tank of fish inside the center. Engaging people and getting them to learn about environmental science through the use of new technology is precisely why the little robot is there.

The center has two kinds of “Peppers” — all the robots have the same name — according to public engagement program assistant Cosette Larash, who said she has come to view the robots as friends after working with them for months.

The one on display Friday came with software that gives it all the basics it needs to serve as a host. It can narrate slideshow “stories” about the center, it can entertain, it can answer pre-programmed questions about the center and itself.

The center’s second Pepper came with a different type of software that is more customizable, and Larash has been working with a group of students from South River High School to make it “more human” by programming unique gestures and changing its voice.

Motions, such as the abilit to pinch like a crab, are meant to accompany environmental stories told by the robot.

The students — Dan DeRycke, Cole Kindig and Zach Livesay — got the robot in March, and programmed it as part of a community challenge class required of all juniors in the school’s STEM magnet.

“By altering the voice vocal patterns and tone and pitch, we could make it talk like a normal human, where it pauses, has a higher tone of pitch depending on what it speaks about and just making it seem like a normal conversation,” Livesay said.

DeRycke and Kindig will continue to program Pepper this summer through an internship at the center. Larash’s ultimate vision is for Pepper to serve as an interactive map that can guide visitors to the precise information they are looking for when they arrive.

Pepper can’t solve the world’s problems, teacher Mark Schrader said, but it does have the potential to engage and inspire a new, diverse generation of science, technology, engineering and math students.

That’s the challenge the students decided to tackle for the class. DeRycke saw the potential in Pepper after they showed their classmates a gesture they programmed — they taught the robot how to dab.

“Just making the robot do that made the class freak out,” DeRycke said.

He said there is a lot to be gained from the environmental lessons the center strives to teach.

“By introducing things like Pepper and other real cutting-edge, interesting, cool kind of technology, you can at least hope to try to bring attention to those kinds of topics,” he said.

Larash agreed — Pepper has appeal as an interactive device in a technology-focused world, and the environmental center hopes to leverage that interest to teach people about science.

DeRycke said they are also striving to balance the more customizable Pepper’s sociability with its ability to inform — the gestures and words that will accompany information need to feel and sound human, he said.

Larash said the students were successful in making their Pepper more human. Schrader agreed.

“You made Pepper seem like a little person,” he told them.

Larash said Pepper could also boost connectivity between the sciences. DeRycke is interested in computer programming, for example.

“Environmental science wasn’t able to reach that type of audience before,” she said.

rpacella@capgaznews.com