Heather “Marilyn Monrobot” Knight, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to take the world’s first robot census, eventually canvassing as many of the home-brew and university robotics efforts as possible.

Knight’s inspiration for initiating the census is her own work in integrating robots into people’s everyday lives. By showcasing the incredible variety and utility of the robots at Carnegie Mellon and elsewhere, Knight thinks she might be able to punch through people’s preconceived notions (and pave the way to getting robots into the home).

So far, she has found 547 robots, all on the CMU campus.