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Robots have captured countless imaginations throughout history.
Recent advances in both mechatronics and software have started to
suggest that the long-promised future of intelligent autonomous
machines, as widely portrayed in popular science fiction for example,
may yet be achievable. The difficulty of this challenge, and the
persistently compelling nature of striving to build such a device, may
explain why robots never seem to lose their attraction to generations of
engineers.
Mastering programming and software engineering is a challenge that
requires effort on the part of students. Too often, students are
deterred in this effort by the long time they must spend learning
fundamental concepts and language syntax before they ever have the
experience of creating anything that seems like a real application. As a
consequence, many students lose interest who might do very well if given
the chance to feel really engaged in the task of creating a meaningful
application earlier in their training. Further, many faculty work very
hard searching for assignments and projects that are at once both
sufficiently engaging and sufficiently accessible to allow them to add
excitement and satisfaction to what can otherwise seem like a dull and
uninteresting exercise.
Asked about types of programming activities to which students respond
well, experienced professors consistently mention two things: games and
robots. No other applications rival these for their ability to interest
students or give them the immediate feeling of creating real software
that does meaningful things. At the same time, games and robots can
offer a means to address some very advanced and sophisticated topics
such as simulation or artificial intelligence.
A key problem with both games and robots, however, has been the cost
and complexity of producing the necessary building blocks that faculty
can use to create computer science assignments. Faculty seldom have
the time or resources to create a practical robotic device that is both
powerful and easy to program, and off-the-shelf solutions are currently
lacking and often expensive. While there have been efforts—both
commercial and otherwise—to create suitable tools for faculty to create
curriculum around games and robots, the true potential of these remains
largely untapped.
Our initiative in robotics is focused addressing this problem. By
partnering with faculty who are domain experts in robotics as well as in
teaching, our goal is to foster creation of state-of-the-art curriculum,
leveraging existing materials and practices as much as possible, but
bringing compelling, practical, and affordable robotics technology into
the options available for computer science teaching professors in their labs. Further,
these resources will be validated through scientific study of their
effectiveness.
This initiative is managed by
Stewart Tansley. |
