Engineering professor invited to appear on Colbert Report

This week, a Penn professor helped Stephen Colbert in his quest to “keep fear alive.”

In preparation for the political satirist’s “Keep Fear Alive” march scheduled for Saturday, School of Engineering and Applied Science professor Daniel Lee traveled to Colbert’s New York studio on Wednesday to film a segment in which Colbert confronts his television alter ego’s greatest fears — which include robots.

The segment is tentatively scheduled to air tonight.

Lee — an associate professor in the department of Electrical and Systems Engineering — leads the UPennalizers, the Penn robotics team which competes annually in RoboCup, an international competition in which groups build and program robots to play soccer.

Lee demonstrated the soccer-playing abilities of the team’s two robots for Colbert, who also confronted his professed fear of “bears and Muslims” during the segment, according to Steve McGill, a first-year graduate student in Electrical and Systems Engineering.

McGill, who went to New York with another Penn student to help Lee set up the robots, said Colbert filmed about three hours of material for the segment, though it is not yet clear what will make the final cut.

One of the gags included having security pat down the robots along with the other participants in the segment, McGill said. Otherwise, he said, Lee’s involvement mostly took the form of a question-and-answer session.

Colbert’s “Keep Fear Alive” event is going to be held in conjunction with Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” this Saturday in Washington, D.C. Both events were planned in response to Glenn Beck’s Aug. 28 “Restoring Honor” rally that was also held in Washington.

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