RobotCup Curriculum

RoboCup uses soccer as the problem field on which a variety of hardware and software technologies are challenged and integrated. The problem goal is to beat a world champion soccer team by the year 2050. http://www.robocup.org/


As of July 24, 07, CNN has a short videoclip on the RoboCup dog from Sony.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2007/07/24/chown.robotic.dogs.explainer.cnn

The $75 Robot-Scribbler

Where the Lego Robot costs around $250, Scribbler is close to $75 and comes preassembled with: three light sensors; a pair of infrared line sensors that could read bar code or follow lines; a contact-bumper sensor; 2 independent motors for the two wheels with stall sensors to protect the motor; 3 programmable LED lights; a speaker which plays a wide range of sounds and notes; a Pen Port for drawing as it drives,; and a port of a serial cable computer interface. effective enough for running obstacles courses. About the size of a frisbee, it is fairly light, about the weight of a pint of milk.

It's programming interface looks similar in style to Lego's programming editor. For more, see http://www.scribblerrobot.com The related curriculum effort is supported by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) is a joint venture of Bryn Mawr, Georgia Tech and Microsoft Research whose goal is to increase student enrollment — particularly of women and underrepresented minorities — in computer science. Microsoft is investing over $1 million to get curriculum developed and into classrooms more quickly.

Combining Lego Robotics activities with the much more affordable Scribbler may be just the thing to enable entire classes to be working in pairs or each with their own robot. A next step for IPRE will be the development of a less expensive robot that has even more features including a camera. They have also created documentation for how to add Bluetooth communication to Scribbler for further levels of interaction.

Leave a comment if you come across some robust curriculum that builds across STEM competencies and goes beyond the Scribbler Startup Guide.

Web 3.0-web robot future playground

A robot could be defined as an agent or system that can move through a space, be programmed to make decisions and do work without your direct intervention. When these agents are software systems, they are generally called bots. These bots move through regions of cyberspace (global information systems) and retrieve data and information. Is a Google search a robot at work? No, a Google web page only works when you are there to direct it. But you can set up a bot to watch for new information and send a link of the web page or a copy of the data to an email address. Many web sites including Google enable users to set up information seeking bots. What are the web addresses of some online bots that you can put into a comment on this posting?

Our Lego robots had to have a special area like a flat floor before they could successfully move around. The web is similar. The web is not a friendly easy place in which bots can operate either. A global movement that is emerging is sometimes called Web 3.0. The first major concept of the web, Web 1.0, was a place where a few publishers could easily send much information to global audiences with less work and cost. The next major concept, Web 2.0, was a place where people had easy tools for global publishing. In Web 3.0, the web is being made easier for "autonomous agents" or bots. For more see Web 3.0 at PC Magazine. This suggests that our physical robots will someday be able to login to the Internet, run a search seeking information or get the information from an online bot, and then move to carry out decisions in the real world based on what it "read". What would be a bot way to track news of Web 3.0?

Given that the Lego robot has Bluetooth capacity and can "talk" with a desktop computer that is connected to the Internet, is that not a project that someone could demonstrate now? What would it read and what would it do? Could the Lego robot also find information in the world and post it to a blog site automatically or to some other Internet place? Please post comments as you begin to get some concept possibilities.

Outer Space Robots

Hey fourth graders, plan a welcoming party for your eight grade year! The feisty Mars duo of robots of Opportunity and Spirit now enduring a major dust storm on Mars will have a fascinating new robotic companion pushing into the space beyond Mars, an asteroid hopper named Dawn. She is programmed to reach orbit around the chunk of ice known as Ceres in the year 2011.

Between Mars and Jupiter astronomers have mapped the asteroid belt that might be described as a floating rock garden of scrap left over from the formation of the solar system. This hardened soup of chemicals mixes asteroids as diverse as ice, basalt, and nickel. It raises the suspicion that much more diverse and interesting lumps are there. Is there a lump for every possible element on the Periodic Table of Elements? Is there a mile wide hunk of gold floating there? This extra chunky soup also provides a kind of measurement of what we as a solar system are made of by examining the ingredients. Further, if the robot called Dawn can rock-hop from one to the other to study them, at some point we can mine them.

In the mean time, watch Dawn's launch on NASA Web TV, a blast off which has recently been reset to some time after July 15, 2007.

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Don't miss a great 13 minute animated movie by Leonard Nimoy of Dawn's mission.

Research to put into comments: What search terms will work best to follow the future news on Dawn? Are there automated agents, web robots, that will deliver that news to you automatically and if so, how do they work?

Ultimate Challenge - Driving a Rover on Mars

Long past the time their systems were expected to quit, the Mars Rover robots, Spirit and Opportunity, continue to roll. These two are real robots on a real mission, collecting and transmitting data on Mars. NASA provides an excellent site of information and imagery on its web site. Visit http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/

The distance to Mars makes for slow conversation with the robots. "The average smallest distance between Mars and the Earth is 78 million kilometers or 48 million miles (and the average greatest distance is 378 million kilometers or 235 million miles)" (Astronomical Institute, 2003). Divide the distance from Mars by the speed of light, then by 60 to get minutes. If 120,000,000 miles aways, a message takes 11 minutes to get there and 11 for a reply. The location of the robots can be found by clicking the Spacecraft link at mars.google.com.

Omega Team Sweats the Details

Omega team consults with the coach, Dr. Howell!

A Model for a 2 week Robot Camps ages 11-14

It is not too early to start thinking about using the knowledge learned at Robot Camp to run a camp for students in this region. Note this model for such a robot camp being run by Rensselaer.

Lego Robotics Does Rubics Cube

As an example of the building intelligence in the Lego Mindstorms community, a fellow with the name of Starpoint posted a solution to the Rubic's Cube using Lego engineering. Wow!

Make - a great magazine for digital builders

http://www.makezine.com/

For digital builders of all ages, check this online publication out. Please post interesting items from this magazine and site.

Alpha Team Design Time

Here the Alpha team designs a solution to a challenge.