Implementing a College Level Robotics Course

August, 2007 Robotics Educators Conference Butler, PA

Implementing a College Level Robotics Course

Jeanine Meyer

Purchase College/SUNY


Overview

• Background/motivation for course

• Course description– Upper-level elective: can satisfy requirements

for mathematics/computer science and new media majors

• Reflections

• Work for you!


Background

• [ancient] work in robotics at IBM Research


Background, cont.

• Box frame robot

• A Manufacturing Language (AML)

• Software for out-sourced Scara robot

• Manufacturing systems– Tools for logistics– Robot surgery (….Robodoc)


Why do course

• Reviewed book on Robotic Sumo by David Perdue– he is working on a Mindstorms book

• Wanted to return to previous interest

• Give students introduction [taste] of operating in the physical world– Variability– Continuous phenomena as opposed to discrete– Dangers– Interactions– Time


And…

We are all grand masters at …putting things on top of other things,….assembly, recognizing many patterns, etc.

Peter Will, IBM

This makes the programming more difficult, not less.


First day exercise

• Ways to program robot– Teleoperator– Teach/playback– Program with sensory feedback

• Data driven automation

• What are the directions / how do you teach someone to tie shoes?


Problems at my institution

• Students not engineers, not particularly strong programmers– Mathematics/computer science– New media– Other

• Wide variety of backgrounds, including– Students who have ‘done robotics’ in middle

school or high school

• Little technical support


Lego Mindstorms• Partial solution

– Capped enrollment at 15– Restrict kits to the lab

• Made exceptions towards the end • 2 out of 15 students purchased their own kits

– Team work is a goal!– Basic building projects: 5 teams of 3– Their building projects … 8 + 2 were enough– Involved the 2 building computer engineers

• Encouraged them to build tribot• Had them substitute when I was away

– Needed to request funds from centralized source: 8 kits


Another problem

• Given all this robotics activity in k-12, how to make this a college course? Would colleagues and/of students think this was just playing with toys?

• Note: this may have been unwarranted worry. – We need electives.– I was willing to take on the task for developing a new

course.– People know my history….


Approach

• Lego Mindstorms only part of the course– Students responsible for defining building

project

• Other part– My lectures on robotics plus– Students responsible for

• Library research assignment• Posting and responding to news on on-line

discussion board


Course Components

• Listen & participate in lecture & discussion• Propose, get approval and do library research &

make presentation on robot topic– Making presentations is a goal by itself– 1 page write-up

• Pay attention to news and make postings & reply to others on robot topics

• Build the assigned Mindstorm projects: teams• Plan and complete original Mindstorm project:

teams or individual [or different hardware]• Midterm and Final


Lecture topics

• Levels of language• Basic mechanics• Very, very basic kinematics & reverse kinematics• Types of manufacturing, automation• Artificial intelligence• Anthropomorphic fallacy (?)• 3D CAD (Google Sketchup)• Movement in a crowded workspace• Locomotion (e.g., walking, crawling)• Telepresence • Surgery


Lecture & Discussion Board topics

• Home health care

• Soccer robotics

• Prothestics

• Vacuuming

• DARPA competitions


Mindstorms projects

• Tribot– Basics with tribot

• Using each sensor• Creating file data

– Mapping a room

• Bluetooth (2 or 3 NXT bricks, maybe in tribots)

• Student defined projects


Aside on Bluetooth

• It took me time and experimentation AND using on-line forums to understand it.

• This is a lesson for the students• I think….


Mapping exercise

• Assume tribot or tribot like robot with typical sensors (bump, ultrasound, rotation), file capability

• You define the constraints, for example, room must be square, or polygon.

• How to generate data to be uploaded to personal computer to draw the [boundaries of] room.


Materials

• Schedule, lecture notes, midterm and final all online newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine/charts.html

http://newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine/charts.html

http://newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine/charts.html


Library research reports

• Locomotion• Space• Animatronics• Muscle wire• Toy• Cars• Healthcare• Mars Rover• Telepresence• Robot surgery• MIT leg lab• 17th-18th century robots• Omnicircus• Microsoft Robotics Studio• Autonomous vehicle


Final Building projects

• Walking puppy (didn’t work, but…)• Cat and mouse• Wall follower (not reliable)• Maze wall follower sending information to NXT• Sumo Crystal & Alexandria's video

• Building robot using own hardware• Demonstrate toy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXsmfpKDZHI


Results• Success!

– [I believe] students understood the difficulties of robotic applications and the wide variety of robot related research & development

– Students did well on quizzes and attempted interesting projects– Autonomous survey

• Limited participation (7/15) but did include the students I expected to be negative, if anyone was, and didn’t include the most enthusiastic.

– Informal feedback positive• 3 students doing independent studies with me in the Fall.

• Good, easy-going group of students so teams worked

• Note: most students knew me and so expected things such as presentations, posting, working in teams, quiz guides


Survey• What did you like best…?

– Building, lab & lecture time, hands-on, experience of professor with older forms…

• What would you change in the course?– Less required posting, historical readings, other programming

languages, more on servos, NOT MUCH

• How would you describe the course to others?– Interesting manufacturing.., relaxed, fun, different

• 71% strongly agreed or agreed that working in teams with the kits was successful in terms of learning

• 43% neutral (none negative) on on-line discussion.


General comment• I think the course in general was great. I would have liked to have a

done a little more work in the labs.• I really liked this class as a new media class due to its lack of

forcing art on us. I think this let the learning take charge instead of focusing on trying to be creative, which lead to being plenty creative.

• i thought it was a great course overall• wonderful class.. fun working in projectss with peers• It would be helpful to some how make the Lego more readily

available to assist in learning the program, error corrections and building projects out side of class.

I also understand it is difficult, but it would be helpful. To some how create a swipe box where their kits are sorted and available outside of class time. Using the student?s id to access to the lego kit which they are using.


Caution

• Truth in advertising:– Colleague included robotics in a course on

computer organization and had some problems

• Sometimes teamwork does not go well– May need

• to define procedure for firing a team member!• to defend giving all members the same grade OR

specifying a way to allocate credit.


HELP!

• Use NXT-G (iconic language) or something else• Google Sketchup: stay with basic ‘get to know

you’ exercise or less or more• Required posting on Blackboard or less or more

and/or required participation in nxtasy forums• How to improve participation by females or is it

okay (4/15, slightly ahead of percentage in math/cs and new media! Sigh… )

• Raise standards: is just trying enough?• What to do with graduates of k-12 programs?


Thank you

• Email [email protected]

• Visit: newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine

• Fall courses include – Programming Games, an introduction to

programming course and – Communicating Quantitative Information, a

general education course based on mathematics in news stories

mailto:[email protected]

http://newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine

http://newmedia.purchase.edu/~Jeanine

Documents

Implementing a College Level Robotics Course