A Model Driven Architecture Framework for Robot Design and Automatic Code Generation

International audienceThis work presents a research and development experiment in software engineering at the IMT Mines Ales, France. The goal is to define a framework allowing a system controller to be graphically designed and its java code to be automatically generated. This framework is expected to be a support for students following the system engineering curriculum, and who have to program LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots although they have not already been trained to concurrent Java programming. The experimental methodology focuses on learning and implementing the following paradigms: model driven design, software architecture for event driven systems and reactive system programming using JAVA threads. We present the design framework defined during this experiment, and the feedback of students who have been involved in setting up the state of the art and developing the framework

Combatting the war against machines : an innovative hands-on approach to coding

Abstract: The 21st century is an era of technological advances that has surpassed previous decades. This is largely due to the level of innovation in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation. However, learners are often reluctant to choose computer programming (coding) as a subject due to it’s perceived difficulty. Nevertheless, it is also well known that learners that are introduced to computer programming at a young age become the computer science university graduates of tomorrow

Child programming: an adequate domain specific language for programming specific robots

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaDue to the limited existence of dedicated robot programming solutions for children (as well as scientific studies), this work presents the design and implementation of a visual domain specific language (DSL), using the Model-Driven Development approach(MDD), for programming robotics and automaton systems with the goal to increase productivity and simplify the software development process. The target audience for this DSL is mostly children with ages starting from 8 years old. Our work implied to use the typical Software Language Engineering life cycle, starting by an elaborate study of the user’s profile, based on work in cognitive sciences, and a Domain analysis. Several visual design paradigms were considered during the design phase of our DSL, and we have focused our studies on the Behavior Trees paradigm, a paradigm intensively used in the gaming industry. Intuitive, simplicity and a small learning curve were the three main concerns considered during the design and development phases. To help validating the DSL and the proposed approach, we used a concrete robotic product for children built with the Open Source Arduino platform as target domain. The last part of this work was dedicated to study the adequacy of the language design choices, compared to other solutions (including commercial technologies), to the target users with different ages and different cognitive-development stages. We have also studied the benefits of the chosen paradigm to domain experts’ proficient on robot programming in different paradigms to determine the possibility to generalize the solution to different user profiles

Improved Fuzzy-Pid Controller In Following Complicated Path For Lego Mindstorms NXT

Line follower robots are monotype mobile robot having the ability to follow a line very accurately. Though many researchers are studying regarding line follower robot controller but most of the concepts are concentrated on theoretical design. The performance of the conventional type of controller in controlling line follower robot is still being a popular topic to be discussed. The traditional controller cannot deal with uncertainty data such as the amount of light whether it is too high or too low light that received by the light sensor which leads to the inaccurate movement of the line follower robot. This research presents an application of improving fuzzy-PID controller method in controlling LEGO Mindstorms NXT while following the complicated path with more accurate and high velocity. LEGO Mindstorms NXT with single light sensor is used as a line follower robot to tracking the complicated black line drawn on the white surface. The investigation of existing method for line following application will help in identifying the best controller method of inspecting the pattern of line follower robot movement. At the end of the research, the movement of LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot is more accurate with high complexity of line by using improved fuzzy-PID controller. The improved fuzzy-PID controller also increases the velocity of the robot when tracking the complicated path

Designing and Implementing a Platform for Collecting Multi-Modal Data of Human-Robot Interaction

This paper details a method of collecting video and audio recordings of people inter- acting with a simple robot interlocutor. The interaction is recorded via a number of cameras and microphones mounted on and around the robot. The system utilised a number of technologies to engage with interlocutors including OpenCV, Python, and Max MSP. Interactions over a three month period were collected at The Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin. Visitors to the gallery freely engaged with the robot, with interactions on their behalf being spontaneous and non-scripted. The robot dialogue was a set pattern of utterances to engage interlocutors in a simple conversation. A large number of audio and video recordings were collected over a three month period

Development of skills in children with ASD using a robotic platform

The interaction and communication skills are essential to live in society. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a gap in these abilities which affects their daily life. Previous studies suggest that children with ASD demonstrate some positive behaviors in presence of a robotic platform. This study intends to evaluate the effect of a robotic platform on children with ASD, checking if the platform can be a stimulating agent for children's interaction, as well as a skill learning promoter. So, it is used the robot Lego Mindstorms NXT as a mediator/reward to encourage children with ASD to interact with others and also to learn some cognitive skills.The authors are grateful to teachers and students of the primary and secondary schools of Aver-o-Mar and their parents for their participation in the project. The authors are also grateful to the Portuguese Foundation for funding through the R&D project RIPD/ADA/109407/2009

Exploring the use of Android devices and LEGO Mindstorms in Children Color Learning Process

Students are becoming less and less interested to learn about science and technology which causes alert to the education industry. The lack of usage of technology itself in education causes the students to be uninterested to learn as they can only learn the theory but cannot see how it is implemented in the real world. The refusal and slow implementation of incorporating technologies into the education system is also not helping the situation. The reason of the students, the teachers and the system are not really ready to incorporate such technologies worsen the problem.This project mainly aims at introducing a learning approach using interactive technology which is attractive to children and hopefully develops into a new exciting learning pattern that matches the future generation desires. Given the recentness of the approach, the project is also developed with an intention to introduce the new technique involved whilst at the same time paves the way for future work to be conducted related to the incorporation of advanced technology into education process. Using Lego Mindstroms as a learning tools incorporate with an Android device by using a Bluetooth connection will allow children to learn while using technology to interact with the environments. By testing the project to a number of target users, feedbacks are collected and the result and effectiveness of the project are recorded. The objectives of the project are meet and the respondent of the project which are children from age of 3 to 5 give good respond to the prototype. Out of the 10 children tested with the prototype, majority like the project and was able to learn effectively. Parents tend to thinks that it is better for their children to learn from the surrounding than learn with virtual item like learning only using apps that show colors at the screen only. This project will hopefully be the first step in attracting children interest back to the science and technology fields which have been a problem in the last few years

Programming Robots for Activities of Everyday Life

Text-based programming remains a challenge to novice programmers in\ua0all programming domains including robotics. The use of robots is gainingconsiderable traction in several domains since robots are capable of assisting\ua0humans in repetitive and hazardous tasks. In the near future, robots willbe used in tasks of everyday life in homes, hotels, airports, museums, etc.\ua0However, robotic missions have been either predefined or programmed usinglow-level APIs, making mission specification task-specific and error-prone.\ua0To harness the full potential of robots, it must be possible to define missionsfor specific applications domains as needed. The specification of missions of\ua0robotic applications should be performed via easy-to-use, accessible ways, and\ua0at the same time, be accurate, and unambiguous. Simplicity and flexibility in\ua0programming such robots are important, since end-users come from diverse\ua0domains, not necessarily with suffcient programming knowledge.The main objective of this licentiate thesis is to empirically understand the\ua0state-of-the-art in languages and tools used for specifying robot missions byend-users. The findings will form the basis for interventions in developing\ua0future languages for end-user robot programming.During the empirical study, DSLs for robot mission specification were\ua0analyzed through published literature, their websites, user manuals, samplemissions and using the languages to specify missions for supported robots.After extracting data from 30 environments, 133 features were identified.\ua0A feature matrix mapping the features to the environments was developedwith a feature model for robotic mission specification DSLs.Our results show that most end-user facing environments exist in the\ua0education domain for teaching novice programmers and STEM subjects. Mostof the visual languages are developed using Blockly and Scratch libraries.\ua0The end-user domain abstraction needs more work since most of the visualenvironments abstract robotic and programming language concepts but not\ua0end-user concepts. In future works, it is important to focus on the development\ua0of reusable libraries for end-user concepts; and further, explore how end-user\ua0facing environments can be adapted for novice programmers to learn\ua0general programming skills and robot programming in low resource settings\ua0in developing countries, like Uganda