Robots and Education in the classroom and in the museum: On the study of robots, and robots for study Illah R. Nourbakhsh The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213
[email protected] Abstract the T.R.I.’s first installed artifact, Insect Telepresence. The Mobile Robot Programming Lab and the Toy Robots This discussion presents the techniques that we use to Initiative at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute both design and evaluate interactive robot-human systems. focus on the interaction between humans and robots for the sake of education. This paper describes two specific endeavors that are representative of the work we do in Robot for study: Mobile Robot Programming robot education and human-robot interaction. The first section describes the Mobile Robot Programming Lab Robotics Laboratory one decade ago meant, with few curriculum designed for undergraduate and graduate exceptions, building a physical robot, then writing students with little or no mobile robotics experience. The limited low-level software for the system while second section describes the process by which an continually debugging the mechanicals and electronics. edutainment robot, Insect Telepresence, was designed, However, with the advent of low-priced mobile robot tested and evaluated by our group and CMU’s Human- chassis (e.g. Nomad Scout, IS-Robotics Magellan, Computer Interaction Institute. ActivMedia Pioneer), a new space of possible robotics courses exists: mobile robot programming laboratories. Mobile robot programming is a software design Introduction problem, and yet software engineering best practices are Mobile robots ground ethereal computation to palpable not very helpful. Mobile robots suffer from uncertainty physicality, and as a result they have the potential to in sensing, unreliability in action, real-time excite and inspire children and adults in a way that no environmental interactions and almost non-deterministic desktop computer can.