Butler, PA

1
Implementing a College Level Robotics Course

• Jeanine Meyer
• Purchase College/SUNY

2
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!

3
Background

• ancient work in robotics at IBM Research

4
Background, cont.

• Box frame robot
• A Manufacturing Language (AML)
• Software for out-sourced Scara robot
• Manufacturing systems
• Tools for logistics
• Robot surgery (.Robodoc)

5
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

6
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.

7
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?

8
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

9
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

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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.

11
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

12
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

13
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

14
Lecture Discussion Board topics

• Home health care
• Soccer robotics
• Prothestics
• Vacuuming
• DARPA competitions

15
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

16
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.

17
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.

18
Materials

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

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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

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Final Building projects

• Walking puppy (didnt 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

21
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 didnt 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

22
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.

23
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.

24
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.

25
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?

26
Thank you

• Email jeanine.meyer_at_purchase.edu
• 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