Autonomous Robots as a Generic Teaching Tool

Sensors, 2022

Given the rising popularity of robotics, student-driven robot development projects are playing a key role in attracting more people towards engineering and science studies. This article presents the early development process of an open-source mobile robot platform—named PlatypOUs—which can be remotely controlled via an electromyography (EMG) appliance using the MindRove brain–computer interface (BCI) headset as a sensor for the purpose of signal acquisition. The gathered bio-signals are classified by a Support Vector Machine (SVM) whose results are translated into motion commands for the mobile platform. Along with the physical mobile robot platform, a virtual environment was implemented using Gazebo (an open-source 3D robotic simulator) inside the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework, which has the same capabilities as the real-world device. This can be used for development and test purposes. The main goal of the PlatypOUs project is to create a tool for STEM education and extrac...

2011 Proceedings of IEEE Southeastcon, 2011

This is a report on our evaluation of Robotis' Bioloid robotic systems for their use in a senior-level engineering robotics course. We had found that Robotis had provided robust embedded C and LabView libraries that we were able to intermix, adapt and extend for our needs in sensor and actuator interfacing, especially in ZigBee applications to create a mobile wireless sensor network whereas the PC acted as the base station to 3 carbots sending back their NIR sensor data and the number of node hops needed for a data packet to get back to base. In the area of harmonizing multiple controllers on a single robotic platform, Robotis did not have tools readily usable for us, but we managed to develop a basic motion capture tool to work on a quadruped robot platform in a master-slave controllers configuration.

1997

There is a need at the undergraduate level to expose students to the complexities of programming robots to accomplish tasks in real time. This paper outlines how a course in robotics can be taught at the undergraduate level with specific experiments that can be used for incremental learning in programming a mobile robot. The experiments can be conducted using either

2008

Besides lectures on basic theoretical topics, contemporary teaching and learning concepts for first semester students give more and more consideration to practically motivated courses. In this context, a new first-year introductory course in practical engineering has been established in the first semester curriculum of Electrical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Based on a threefold learning concept, programming skills in MATLAB are taught to 309 students within a full-time block course laboratory. The students are encouraged to transfer known mathematical basics to program algorithms and real-world applications performed by 100 LEGO Mindstorms robots. A new MATLAB toolbox and twofold project tasks have been developed for this purpose by a small team of supervisors. The students are supervised by over 60 tutors at 23 institutes, and are encouraged to create their own robotics applications. We describe how the laboratory motivates the students to act and think like engineers and to solve real-world issues with limited resources. The evaluation results show that the proposed practical course concept successfully boosts students' motivation, advances their programming skills, and encourages the peer learning process.

… , 2003 ASEE Annual …, 2003

During the past ten years, The Ohio State University's College of Engineering has been aggressively addressing the issue of student retention. A major element in this effort is the development of a first-year engineering program that has moved from a series of related but separate courses for first-year engineering fundamentals to a framework that involves two course sequences with tightly coupled courses. Engineering orientation, engineering graphics, and engineering problem solving with computer programming are now offered in each of two course sequences, 1 one called the Fundamentals of Engineering and the other the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors. These course sequences retain part of the traditional material but now include hands-on laboratory experiences that lead to design/build projects. 2 Teamwork, project management, report writing, and oral presentations have assumed important roles in both sequences. This paper describes the administrative and teaching experiences with a design/build project course in the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors sequence that serves as a capstone-like culmination to the engineering honor students' first academic year.

In American Society for Engineering Education Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (ASEE), 2008

Hands-on experience plays a key role in undergraduate engineering education. It is a recognized tool for recruitment and retention, as well as for encouraging participation in class and in research outside of the classroom. However, early undergraduate engineering education,especially during the freshman year, is often focused on foundational theory, and delivered through lecture format, rather than hands-on projects. We have developed and taught a semester-long class at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering (VSoE) that uses robotics as a pedagogical tool for engaging students in engineering, and illustrating general engineering principles and techniques in a hands-on manner. The model for the new course is to combine lectures on principles and applications of engineering from professors from a variety of VSoE departments with lab experience, wherein students work with robots in order to directly apply those principles and scratch the surface of some applications. Our goal is to create a curriculum where, with little to no prior experience with either programming or robotics, freshmen interested in engineering can explore both the breadth of engineering, and glimpse the depth of a single domain through engaging hands-on projects. Unlike most other robotics courses, especially introductory ones that use simple robot platforms such as LEGO robots, ours features highly sophisticated mobile and humanoid robots, allowing the students to develop engaging and sophisticated-appearing behavior. The semester culminated in a public exhibition of team projects at a local science museum. We will use the experiences of the students and instructors of this new course to study the impact of hands-on engineering,team-work, and open challenges on encouraging retention in engineering beyond the first year,for recruitment and retention of traditionally under-represented student groups.

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 1995

There is a growing consensus among computer science faculty that it is quite di cult to teach the introductory course to Arti cial Intelligence well. This is because AI lacks a uni ed methodology, it overlaps with many other disciplines, and involves a wide range of skills from very applied to quite formal. This proposal addresses these problems by (1) o ering a unifying theme that draws together the disparate topics of AI; (2) focusing the course syllabus on the role AI plays in the core computer science curriculum; and (3) motivating the students to learn by using concrete, hands-on laboratory exercises. The proposed theme is to conceive of each topic in AI (such as search, planning, learning, vision) as a robotics task and then to have the students build their own robots and program them to accomplish the tasks. By constructing a physical entity in conjunction with the code to control it, the students have a unique opportunity to directly tackle many central issues of computer science including the interaction between hardware and software, space complexity in terms of the memory limitations of the robot's controller, and time complexity in terms of the speed of the robot's action decisions. More importantly, the robot theme provides a strong incentive towards learning because students want to see their inventions succeed.

2014

Computer Science Education, 1996

The Young Scholars Program at the Institute for Systems Research of the University of Maryland at College Park is an innovative summer research experience for high school students from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. Its goal is to steer talented high school seniors toward higher education and careers in science and engineering. One particularly popular component of this program is a two week mini{course in robotics. This course utilizes the resources of the Intelligent Servosystems Laboratory of the university to introduce and demonstrate theoretical and practical aspects of robotics. This paper reports on the characteristics that make this a unique e ort in robotics{related education for both the Young Scholars Program participants and the small group of University of Maryland graduate students who have been responsible for the development and instruction of this course.

Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation, 2009

S tudents in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at Montclair state University have several opportunities to learn about laboratory robotics. A unit on robotics is included in the senior level instrumental analysis class at the end of the spring semester. Students are also able to receive individual instruction on the robotic systems and high-school students have developed automated procedures during summer enrichment programs. An important component of the program is the competition setup between the men and women students of the instrumental analysis class. This keeps student attention focused on the exercises without the need to assign homework. This short article describes the equipment used by the department, provides an overview of how it is used, and contains informal observations made by the author about the student experience. (JALA 2009;14:90-93)