COTSBots: computationally powerful, low-cost robots for Computer Science curriculums

  • Authors:

  • Terence Soule;Robert B. Heckendorn

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Idaho, Moscow, ID;University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

The incorporation of robots in the Computer Science (CS) classroom can increase excitement and engagement, improve enrollment and retention, and bring relevance to a variety of study areas. Appropriately designed robots and curricular materials can serve as a tool for teaching a host of important subjects, such as mobile device programming, networking, image processing, and artificial intelligence. We believe educational experiences with robots will become an increasingly important part of a well-rounded CS education. However, we find that the majority of commercially available robots, while well-designed and appealing to other engineering disciplines are in fact overpriced, under-powered, and not well designed for the software emphasis found in CS programs. As an alternative we have used Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) design principles and student input through two directed study courses to design, build, and test robots that we believe are better suited to a CS audience. In this paper we describe our approach to affordable educational robots for CS. We provide basic designs, and give examples of several projects that can be done with them (more detailed designs and instructions are available at our website cotsbots.wordpress.com). Our hope is that this will encourage other educators to copy our designs and put cheap, computationally powerful, and educationally effective robots in the CS classroom.