Personal Robots for CS1

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Personal Robots for CS1

• Deepak KumarBryn Mawr College

Deepak Kumar
Promising Practices in CS1
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IPRE

• Institute for Personal Robots in Education
• Goals To explore the use of personal robots
• People Douglas Blank, Deepak Kumar (BMC),
  Tucker Balch, Mark Guzdial (GaTech),
  Stewart Tansley (MSR)

Deepak Kumar
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Key Motivators

• Introductory computing courses serve as a gateway
  into the CS curriculum.
• Should provide interesting and diverse range of
  examples and exercises.
• Alignment of course content to student interests
  to increase engagement can have a positive impact
  on students choosing to enter computing as a
  major in college.
• Most tasks should be attainable and provide a
  basis for supportive and positive feedback to
  students.

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Additional Motivators

• Use a personal robot
• Let the needs of the curriculum drive the design
  of the robot, software, and text
• Use tools that are easy to use, scale with
  experience
• Create an accessible, engaging environment for
  new, diverse population of students
• Computer Science ? programming
• Make computing a social activity
• Make computing a medium for creativity
• Performances vs. competitions

Deepak Kumar
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A Personal Robot Kit

• Color camera
• 3 Light sensors
• 2 IR proximity sensors
• 2 Line sensors
• Stall sensor
• Speaker
• 3 LEDs
• 2 motors
• Bluetooth wireless
• Pen port
• Myro Python Module

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Myro Features

• Simple, easy to use API even for
  non-programmers.
• Seamlessly integrated with standard Python.
• Plans to work with MSRS and .NET (will support
  multiple languages).
• Design driven by curricular goals.

See Kumar et al. Engaging Computing Students
with AI and Robotics, Forthcoming in Spring 2008.
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Hello World

• Hello World
• from myro import
• speak(Hello, World!)

Deepak Kumar
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CS1Course Contents

• Chapter 1 The World of Robots
• Chapter 2 Robots Personal or Otherwise
• Chapter 3 Building Brains
• Chapter 4 Sensing the World
• Chapter 5 Making Decisions
• Chapter 6 Behaviors
• Chapter 7 Control Paradigms
• Chapter 8 Making Music
• Chapter 9 Communication
• Chapter 10 Artificial Intelligence
• Chapter 11 Computing Computation
• Chapter 12 Applications of Robots

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Programming as a social activity
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Myro Example
def main() while True Left, Right
getObstacles() if Left
turnRight(turnSpeed) elif Right
turnLeft(turnSpeed) else
forward(cruiseSpeed)
Avoiding Obstacles from myro import
initialize(ask(What port?)) program
settings... cruiseSpeed 0.6 turnSpeed 0.5
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A CS1 Assignment Exploring a Pyramid
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Some Results

• Learned CS concepts through robots
• Robots made learning experience more hands-on,
  tangible, and exciting
• Most frustrating parts were dealing with robot
  hardware inconsistencies
• Viewed CS as a type of logic and problem solving
  requiring patience thought
• Discovered that CS and robots are applicable to
  the real world

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Another CS1 Assignment
Corral Exiting/Escape Imagine a corral (an
enclosed area with maze like partitions and an
entrance) with a light source at the entrance (as
shown in the figure to the right). Given the
robot's position, can we design a behavior that
will enable the robot to exit the corral?
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Some Directions

• Ability to draw
• Ability to take pictures
• Ability to make music/tones
• Ability to play sounds and talk
• Ability to express
• Ability for robot interaction
• Ability to have a web presence

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Comments?
For more information visit www.roboteducation.org
Deepak Kumar
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Deepak Kumar