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Robotics as multi-disciplinary learning: a summer course perspective
... The proposal highlights the need to promote not only the STEM skills required in the curricula of CS for schools but also the communication and teamwork required by the teachers in the formation process. Also, Ferreira and Freitas [77] describe a robotics course offered to undergraduate, Master and PhD students to enhance learning in kinematics and in Robotic operating System (ROS). Pertaining to the gender and minorities gap in CS, Hallak et al. [108] depict a methodology to engage students that could serve as a reference for future studies. ...
In the last decade, Single-Board Computers (SBCs) have been employed more frequently in engineering and computer science both to technical and educational levels. Several factors such as the versatility, the low-cost, and the possibility to enhance the learning process through technology have contributed to the educators and students usually employ these devices. However, the implications, possibilities, and constraints of these devices in engineering and Computer Science (CS) education have not been explored in detail. In this systematic literature review, we explore how the SBCs are employed in engineering and computer science and what educational results are derived from their usage in the period 2010-2020 at tertiary education. For that, 154 studies were selected out of n=605 collected from the academic databases Ei Compendex, ERIC, and Inspec. The analysis was carried-out in two phases, identifying, e.g., areas of application, learning outcomes, and students and researchers' perceptions. The results mainly indicate the following aspects: (1) The areas of laboratories and e-learning, computing education, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), and persons with disabilities gather the studies in the review. (2) Researchers highlight the importance of the SBCs to transform the curricula in engineering and CS for the students to learn complex topics through experimentation in hands-on activities. (3) The typical cognitive learning outcomes reported by the authors are the improvement of the students' grades and the technical skills regarding the topics in the courses. Concerning the affective learning outcomes, the increase of interest, motivation, and engagement are commonly reported by the authors.
... The proposal highlights the need to promote not only the STEM skills required in the curricula of CS for schools but also the communication and teamwork required by the teachers in the formation process. Also, Ferreira and Freitas [77] describe a robotics course offered to undergraduate, Master and PhD students to enhance learning in kinematics and in Robotic operating System (ROS). Pertaining to the gender and minorities gap in CS, Hallak et al. [108] depict a methodology to engage students that could serve as a reference for future studies. ...
In the last decade, Single-Board Computers (SBCs) have been employed more frequently in engineering and computer science both to technical and educational levels. Several factors such as the versatility, the low-cost, and the possibility to enhance the learning process through technology have contributed to the educators and students usually employ these devices. However, the implications, possibilities, and constraints of these devices in engineering and Computer Science (CS) education have not been explored in detail. In this systematic literature review, we explore how the SBCs are employed in engineering and computer science and what educational results are derived from their usage in the period 2010-2020 at tertiary education. For that, 154 studies were selected out of n=605 collected from the academic databases Ei Compendex, ERIC, and Inspec. The analysis was carried out in two phases, identifying, e.g., areas of application, learning outcomes, and students and researchers’ perceptions. The results mainly indicate the following aspects: (1) The areas of laboratories and e-learning, computing education, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), and persons with disabilities gather the studies in the review. (2) Researchers highlight the importance of the SBCs to transform the curricula in engineering and CS for the students to learn complex topics through experimentation in hands-on activities. (3) The typical cognitive learning outcomes reported by the authors are the improvement of the students’ grades and the technical skills regarding the topics in the courses. Concerning the affective learning outcomes, the increase of interest, motivation, and engagement are commonly reported by the authors.
... Artificial intelligence, within the context of robotics, can generally be defined as a way to endow robots with the capability to perform functions, such as learning, decision-making, or other intelligent behaviors. To solve a simple problem like to solve the maze [20][21][22][23][24], we used a simple and very common method which is the wall follower robot. ...
This article describes the development of architecture cloud-based for control different robotic platform to be used as an interdisciplinary teaching tool integrated in the curriculum. The results obtained with this educational approach for control robotic platform shown that a practical-learning approach usage in conjunction with highly motivating topics and promotes academic success and improves theoretical concepts comprehension. Students increased knowledge and skills during the problem resolution and achieved a real solution according their options. Moreover, this approach provides students an extensive learning experience on current technologies, architectures, modules and programming languages.
Mobile robotics has become an essential content in many subjects within most Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in engineering. Visual sensors have emerged as a powerful tool to perform reliable localization and mapping tasks for a mobile robot. Moreover, the use of images permits achieving other high level tasks such as object and people detection, recognition, or tracking. Nonetheless, our teaching experience confirms that students encounter many difficulties before dealing with visual localization and mapping algorithms. Initial stages such as data acquisition (images and trajectory), preprocessing or visual feature extraction, usually imply a considerable effort for many students. Consequently, the teaching process is prolonged, whereas the active learning and the students’ achievement are certainly affected. Considering these facts, we have implemented a Matlab software tool to generate an open variety of virtual environments. This allows students to easily obtain synthetic raw data, according to a predefined robot trajectory inside the designed environment. The virtualization software also produces a set of images along the trajectory for performing visual localization and mapping experiments. As a result, the overall testing procedure is alleviated and students report to take better advantage of the lectures and the practical sessions, thus demonstrating higher achievement in terms of comprehension of fundamental mobile robotics concepts. Comparison results regarding the achievement of students, engagement, satisfaction and attitude to the use of the tool, are presented.
The paper describes the use of computer applications on education for industrial robotic systems. Robotics evolved as a central issue in teaching for scientific and engineering courses and inherently encompasses a spectrum of sciences and technologies and qualification levels. However, most current teaching approaches, related to robotics, concentrate on individual aspects or small student groups and do not involve dangerous situations. With a mixed‐reality robotics teaching, a true interdisciplinary setup can be reached, this approach has been used in a robotics course at higher education, to prepare students for future activities in industry and also in research. This active learning experience approach in the field of Industrial Robotics was implemented in a Master degree on Electrical Engineering.
This paper describes a two-month summer intensive course designed to introduce participants with a hands-on technical craft on robotics and to acquire experience in the low-level details of embedded systems. Attendants started this course with a brief introduction to robotics; learned to draw, design and create a personalized 3D structure for their mobile robotic platform and developed skills in embedded systems. They were familiarize with the practices used in robotics, learning to connect all sensors and actuator, developing a typical application on differential kinematic using Arduino, exploring ROS features under Raspberry Pi environment and Arduino – Raspberry Pi communication. Different paradigms and some real applications and programming were addressed on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. Throughout the course, participants were introduced to programming languages (including Python and C++), advanced programming concepts such as ROS, basic API development, system concepts such as I2C and UART serial interfaces, PWM motor control and sensor fusion to improve robotic navigation and localization. This paper describes not just the concept, layout and methodology used on RobotCraft 2017 but also presents the participants knowledge background and their overall opinions, leading to focus on lessons learned and suggestions for future editions.
This paper describes a two-month summer collective intern-ship conceived to provide a unique hands-on experience in robotics. The objective of the Robotics Craftsmanship International Academy, or RobotCraft for short, is to introduce higher education students in the full design cycle of a mobile robotic platform, providing training in computer-aided design (CAD), mechatronics, low-level programming of embedded systems, high-level development using the Robot Operating System (ROS), and artificial intelligence. The training is mainly pro-moted by Ingeniarius, a private company devoted to the development of intelligent systems and robotic solutions, in close collaboration with a R&D robotics institute, the Institute of Systems and Robotics from Uni-versity of Coimbra (ISR-UC). This non-academic teaching, which suc-cessfully completed its second edition, already encompassed around 150 students and 100 universities, being evaluated by participants as chal-lenging, engaging, and beneficial not only to their overall understanding of robotics, but also guiding them through their future academic and professional endeavors.
This paper presents one methodology for teaching engineering students, which relies on open platform requiring basic knowledge of robotics, like mechanics, control or energy management. Walking robots are well known for being able to walk over rough terrain and adapt to various environments. Hexapod robots are chosen because of their better stability and higher number of different gaits. However, having to hold the whole weight of the body and a large number of actuators makes all walking robots less energetically efficient than wheeled robots. This platform endows students with an intuitive learning for current technologies, development and testing of new algorithms in the area of mobile robotics and also in generating good team-building.
Multi-robot patrolling is a key feature for various applications related to surveillance and security, and it has been studied from several different perspectives, ranging from techniques that devise optimal off-line strategies to implemented systems. However, still few approaches consider on-line decision techniques that can cope with uncertainty and non-determinism in robot behaviors. In this article we address on-line coordination, by casting the multi-robot patrolling problem as a task assignment problem and proposing two solution techniques: DTA-Greedy, which is a baseline greedy approach, and DTAP, which is based on sequential single-item auctions. We evaluate the performance of our system in a realistic simulation environment (built with ROS and stage) as well as on real robotic platforms. In particular, in the simulated environment we compare our task assignment approaches with previous off-line and on-line methods. Our results confirm that on-line coordination approaches improve the performance of the multi-robot patrolling system in real environments, and that coordination approaches that employ more informed coordination protocols (e.g., DTAP) achieve better performances with respect to state-of-the-art online approaches (e.g., SEBS) in scenarios where interferences among robots are likely to occur. Moreover, the deployment on real platforms (three Turtlebots in an office environment) shows that our on-line approaches can successfully coordinate the robots achieving good patrolling behaviors when facing typical uncertainty and noise (e.g., localization and navigation errors) associated to real platforms.
Patrolling indoor infrastructures with a team of cooperative mobile robots is a challenging task, which requires effective multi-agent coordination. Deterministic patrol circuits for multiple mobile robots have become popular due to their exceeding performance. However their predefined nature does not allow the system to react to changes in the system’s conditions or adapt to unexpected situations such as robot failures, thus requiring recovery behaviors in such cases. In this article, a probabilistic multi-robot patrolling strategy is proposed. A team of concurrent learning agents adapt their moves to the state of the system at the time, using Bayesian decision rules and distributed intelligence. When patrolling a given site, each agent evaluates the context and adopts a reward-based learning technique that influences future moves. Extensive results obtained in simulation and real world experiments in a large indoor environment show the potential of the approach, presenting superior results to several state of the art strategies.
Ensuring a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) in real and complex environments is an arduous task since the strength of the connection between two robots can rapidly change over time or even disappear. An extension of the Particle Swarm Optimization to multi-robot applications was recently proposed and denoted as Robotic Darwinian PSO (RDPSO). This paper contributes with a further extension of the RDPSO, by integrating a fault-tolerant distributed search in order to prevent communication network splits. To that end, each robot performs packet forwarding according to a paradigm of multi-hop communication, thus maintaining a maximum range or minimum signal quality between its k “best” neighbors. This results in a sum of k virtual forces for each robot to ensure a multi-connected MANET over time. Experimental results with 15 physical robots show that a more fault-tolerant strategy clearly influences the time needed to converge to the final solution but is less susceptible to robot failures.
This paper focuses on the problem of patrolling an environment with a team of autonomous agents. Given a set of strategically important locations (viewpoints) with different priorities, our patrolling strategy consists of 1) constructing a tour through the viewpoints, and 2) driving the robots along the tour in a coordinated way. As performance criteria, we consider the weighted refresh time, i.e., the longest time interval between any two visits of a viewpoint, weighted by the viewpoint's priority. We consider the design of both optimal trajectories and distributed control laws for the robots to converge to optimal trajectories. First, we propose a patrolling strategy and we characterize its performance as a function of the environment and the viewpoints priorities. Second, we restrict our attention to the problem of patrolling a nonintersecting tour, and we describe a team trajectory with minimum weighted refresh time. Third, for the tour patrolling problem and for two distinct communication scenarios, namely the Passing and the Neighbor-Broadcast communication models, we develop distributed algorithms to steer the robots toward a minimum weighted refresh time team trajectory. Finally, we show the effectiveness and robustness of our control algorithms via simulations and experiments.
Mobile Ad hoc Networks have attracted much attention in the last years, since they allow the coordination and cooperation between agents belonging to a multi-robot system. However, initially deploying autonomously a wireless sensor robot network in a real environment has not taken the proper attention. Moreover, maintaining the connectivity between agents in real and complex environments is an arduous task since the strength of the connection between two nodes (i.e., robots) can change rapidly in time or even disappear. This paper compares two autonomous and realistic marsupial strategies for initial deployment in un-known scenarios, in the context of swarm exploration: Random and Extended Spiral of Theodorus. These are based on a hierarchical approach, in which exploring agents, named scouts, are autonomously deployed through explicit cooperation with supporting agents, denoted as rangers. Experimental results with a team of heterogeneous robots are conducted using both real and virtual robots. Results show the effectiveness of the methods, using a performance metric based on dispersion. Conclusions drawn in this work pave the way for a whole series of possible new approaches.
The need for engineering educators to influence reform of science-technology education in schools and, especially, contribute in stating technology as a new school subject is argued. The approaches to applying systems theory in education are outlined. An introductory ‘Robotics and Real Time Control Systems’ course has been developed as a possible approach to systems education and insight into engineering. The course concept and the master plan, based on the ‘threaded’ metacurricular approach, are proposed. The stages of design process for the course curriculum are considered. The course has been implemented in a number of high schools in Israel. An example of one project performed by a student team is presented.
This paper covers a wide knowledge of physical and dynamical models useful for building flying robots and a new generation of flying platform developed in the similarity of flying animals. The goal of this work is to develop a simulation environment and dynamic control using the high-level calculation tool MatLab and the modeling, simulation, and analysis of dynamic systems tool Simulink. Once created the dynamic models to study, this work involves the study and understanding of the dynamic stability criteria to be adopted and their potential use in the control of flying models.
J. Millham and L. I. Jacobson's (1978) 2-factor model of socially desirable responding based on denial and attribution components is reviewed and disputed. A 2nd model distinguishing self-deception and impression management components is reviewed and shown to be related to early factor-analytic work on desirability scales. Two studies, with 511 undergraduates, were conducted to test the model. A factor analysis of commonly used desirability scales (e.g., Lie scale of the MMPI, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) revealed that the 2 major factors were best interpreted as Self-Deception and Impression Management. A 2nd study employed confirmatory factor analysis to show that the attribution/denial model does not fit the data as well as the self-deception/impression management model. A 3rd study, with 100 Ss, compared scores on desirability scales under anonymous and public conditions. Results show that those scales that had loaded highest on the Impression Management factor showed the greatest mean increase from anonymous to public conditions. It is recommended that impression management, but not self-deception, be controlled in self-reports of personality. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper examines a particular methodology of teaching engineering design to undergraduate engi-neering students, which relies on Lego ® Mindstorms ™ . A number of important issues are addressed, including the timing of the design module within the programme, prior knowledge required and assessment components. The module, which has been running for three years, was found to have many positive attributes, not only in relation to the core design activity, but also in generating good team-building and engaging students with the degree programme.
This paper proposes two extensions of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Darwinian Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO), respectively named as RPSO (Robotic PSO) and RDPSO (Robotic DPSO), so as to adapt these promising biological-inspired techniques to the domain of multi-robot systems, by taking into account obstacle avoidance. These novel algorithms are demonstrated for groups of simulated robots performing a distributed exploration task. The concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion are used in the RDPSO algorithm as a “punish-reward” mechanism enhancing the ability to escape from local optima. Experimental results obtained in a simulated environment show that biological and sociological inspiration can be useful to meet the challenges of robotic applications that can be described as optimization problems (e.g. search and rescue).
As enrollments in engineering and computer science programs around the world have fallen in recent years, those who wish to see this trend reversed take heart from findings that children are more likely to develop an abiding interest in technology if they are exposed to it at an early age [3, 9]. In line with this research, we now see more summer camps and workshops being offered to middle school students with the objective of teaching programming and computer technology [1, 6, 8, 12]. To offer students a stimulating and interesting environment while teaching computing subjects, the learning tools in these camps usually revolve around robots and graphical programming of animations or games. These tools tend to mainly attract youngsters who like robotics or game design. However, we believe that we can improve the diversity of the student pool by introducing other topics. In this paper, we describe our experience in designing and organizing a programming course that focuses on wearable computing, fashion and design for middle school students. We will show that 1) wearable computing is interesting and inspiring to the students, 2) wearable computing motivates both boys and girls to learn technology and computing, which implies that it may be able to increase the potential computer science population, 3) wearable computing can provide a space for students to exercise their creativity while at the same time, teaching them about technology and programming.
A group of agents can be used to perform patrolling tasks in a variety of domains ranging from computer network administration to computer wargame simulations. The multi-agent patrolling problem has recently received growing attention from the multi-agent community, due to the wide range of potential applications. Many algorithms based on reactive and cognitive architectures have been developed, giving encouraging results. However, no theoretical analysis of this problem has been conducted. In this paper, various classes of patrolling strategies are proposed and compared. More precisely, these classes are compared to the optimal strategy by means of a standard complexity analysis.
Funded by the US National Science Foundation, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has spent the last eight years developing and implementing a comprehensive educational robotics program for youth ages 9–14. The program was delivered in informal (out-of-school) learning environments through robotics camps, clubs, and competitions and provided robotics experiences to over 5000 youth and 400 educators. The goal of the project was to positively impact the youths’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge and attitudes — and to foster an interest in STEM careers. Results of extensive research and evaluation showed that youth participation in the robotics activities increased their STEM content knowledge (particularly engineering and computer programming), their perceived problem solving skills and their interest in engineering careers. Youth also perceived that the robotics activities were different from those in school, reporting that the robotics camp was more interesting and involved more hands-on activities.
This study was designed to examine the impact of participating in an after-school robotics competition on high school students' attitudes toward science. Specifically, this study used the Test of Science-Related Attitude to measure students' social implications of science, normality of scientists, attitude toward scientific inquiry, adoption of scientific attitudes, enjoyment of science lessons, leisure interest in science, and career interest in science. Results indicated that students who participated in a robotic competition had a more positive attitude toward science and science-related areas in four of the seven categories examined: social implications of science, normality of scientists, attitude toward scientific inquiry, and adoption of scientific attitudes. Implications of results on students' attitudes are discussed.
This article applies a performance metric to the multi-robot patrolling task to more efficiently distribute patrol areas among robot team members. The multi-robot patrolling task employs multiple robots to perform frequent visits to known areas in an environment, while minimizing the time between node visits. Conventional strategies for performing this task assume that the robots will perform as expected and do not address situations in which some team members patrol inefficiently. However, reliable performance of team members may not always be a valid assumption. This paper considers an approach for monitoring robot performance in a patrolling task and dynamically reassigning tasks from those team members that perform poorly. Experimental results from simulation and on a team of indoor robots demonstrate that in using this approach, tasks can be dynamically and more efficiently distributed in a multi-robot patrolling application.
The participation of women in engineering education has been a subject of many engineering education studies. This paper presents an investigation into the status and participation of females in engineering courses in the Faculty of Engineering at Monash University over the last 30 years. The statistical data gathered here indicate that the rate of participation of females in engineering courses at both the undergraduate level is still unsatisfactory. More work is needed throughout the entire education system, beginning at the primary and secondary levels, to increase the entrance number of females in engineering at the tertiary level. For reasons of comparison, the paper also considers the status and participation of females in science disciplines at Monash University.
Typical features of entry-, junior- and advanced-level robot contests are presented. The RoboCup educational survey method is considered. Characteristic data on the team members, their activities and motivation to participate in the program, as indicated by the questionnaire results, are discussed. New initiatives directly related to education are derived.
The paper presents a program for robotics education that runs on standard PCs under the Microsoft Windows environment. The RobLib package is designed for undergraduate students and emphasis the fundamental aspects of robot modelling and control. The software is self-explanatory and uses menus, dialog boxes with figures and context-dependent on-line help. In this perspective, students are motivated to investigate on the workspace, kinematics, dynamics, trajectory planning, position and force control of manipulators. Based on this first experience, further studies on robotics, using more sophisticated packages and concepts, are, then, more attractive from the students point of view.
The Darwinian Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO) is an evolutionary algorithm that extends the Particle Swarm Optimization using natural selection to enhance the ability to escape from sub-optimal solutions. An extension of the DPSO to multi-robot applications has been recently proposed and denoted as Robotic Darwinian PSO (RDPSO), benefiting from the dynamical partitioning of the whole population of robots, hence decreasing the amount of required information exchange among robots. This paper further extends the previously proposed algorithm adapting the behavior of robots based on a set of context-based evaluation metrics. Those metrics are then used as inputs of a fuzzy system so as to systematically adjust the RDPSO parameters (i.e., outputs of the fuzzy system), thus improving its convergence rate, susceptibility to obstacles and communication constraints. The adapted RDPSO is evaluated in groups of physical robots, being further explored using larger populations of simulated mobile robots within a larger scenario.
A contemporaneous system of teaching university graduates is not able to prove, in practice, that the adaptation process has a positive influence on graduates. Analysis of such problems serves as a way to arrange a new education course oriented to robotics at the Department of Industrial Robotics, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Technical university in Kosice. The new course, proved by 3 years of practice, results from closer binding with professional practice providing pedagogical teaching in the preparation process of graduates. The model is derived from manufacturing, engineering, and technologists modification (introduced in the USA around 1985) in our present teaching process conditions.
This article deals with spatial reasoning activities required for operating a robot-manipulator. A strategy for learning robot movements, focused on imparting spatial skills, has been developed and implemented in a pilot study on several groups of learners including undergraduate students and teacher trainees at the Technion as well as high-school pupils.
Dragonflies demonstrate unique and superior flight performances than most of the other insect species and birds. They are equipped with two pairs of independently controlled wings granting an unmatchable flying performance and robustness. In this paper, it is presented an adaptive scheme controlling a nonlinear model inspired in the dragonfly-like robot. It is proposed a hybrid adaptive (HA) law for adjusting the parameters analyzing the tracking error. The performance analysis proves the superiority of the HA law over the direct adaptive (DA) method in terms of faster and improved tracking and parameter convergence.
Robotics is that field concerned with the connection of perception to action. Artificial Intelligence must have a central role in Robotics if the connection is to be intelligent. Artificial Intelligence addresses the crucial questions of: what knowledge is required in any aspect of thinking; how that knowledge should be represented; and how that knowledge should be used Robotics challenges AI by forcing it to deal with real objects in the real world. Techniques and representations developed for purely cognitive problems, often in toy domains, do not necessarily extend to meet the challenge.
Robots combine mechanical effectors, sensors, and computers. AI has made significant contributions to each component. We review AI contributions to perception and object oriented reasoning. Object-oriented reasoning includes reasoning about space, path-planning, uncertainty, fitting, and friction. We concluded with three examples that illustrate the kinds of reasoning or problem solving abilities we would like to endow robots with.
This study reviews recently published scientific literature on the use of robotics in schools, in order to: (a) identify the potential contribution of the incorporation of robotics as educational tool in schools, (b) present a synthesis of the available empirical evidence on the educational effectiveness of robotics as an educational tool in schools, and (c) define future research perspectives concerning educational robotics. After systematically searching online bibliographic databases, ten relevant articles were located and included in the study. For each article, we analyze the purpose of the study, the content to be taught with the aid of robotics, the type of robot used, the research method used, and the sample characteristics (sample size, age range of students and/or level of education) and the results observed. The articles reviewed suggest that educational robotics usually acts as an element that enhances learning, however, this is not always the case, as there are studies that have reported situations in which there was no improvement in learning. The outcomes of the literature review are discussed in terms of their implications for future research, and can provide useful guidance for educators, practitioners and researchers in the area.
The project conceived in 1929 by Gardner Murphy and the writer aimed first to present a wide array of problems having to do with five major "attitude areas"--international relations, race relations, economic conflict, political conflict, and religion. The kind of questionnaire material falls into four classes: yes-no, multiple choice, propositions to be responded to by degrees of approval, and a series of brief newspaper narratives to be approved or disapproved in various degrees. The monograph aims to describe a technique rather than to give results. The appendix, covering ten pages, shows the method of constructing an attitude scale. A bibliography is also given.
Using a robotics competition to teach about and stimulate enthusiasm for Earth science and other STEM topics
- H Fike
- P Barnhart
- C E Brevik
- E C Brevik
- C Burgess
- J Chen
Robotics Competitions: The Choice Is up to You
- johnson
Education with robots inspired in biological systems
- N M Fonseca Ferreira
- F Moita
- D N Victor
- João Santos
- João Ferreira
- Frederico Miguel Candido
- Santos
Using a robotics competition to teach about and stimulate enthusiasm for Earth science and other STEM topics
- fike