Overview of technologies for building robots in the classroom

This paper aims to give an overview of technologies that can be used to implement robotics within an educational context. We discuss complete robotics systems as well as projects that implement only certain elements of a robotics system, such as electronics, hardware, or software. We believe that Maker Movement and DIY trends offers many new opportunities for teaching and feel that they will become much more prominent in the future. Products and projects discussed in this paper are: Mindstorms, Vex, Arduino, Dwengo, Raspberry Pi, MakeBlock, OpenBeam, BitBeam, Scratch, Blockly and ArduBlock

Systems overview of Ono: a DIY reproducible open source social robot

One of the major obstacles in the study of HRI (human-robot interaction) with social robots is the lack of multiple identical robots that allow testing with large user groups. Often, the price of these robots prohibits using more than a handful. A lot of the commercial robots do not possess all the necessary features to perform specific HRI experiments and due to the closed nature of the platform, large modifications are nearly impossible. While open source social robots do exist, they often use high-end components and expensive manufacturing techniques, making them unsuitable for easy reproduction. To address this problem, a new social robotics platform, named Ono, was developed. The design is based on the DIY mindset of the maker movement, using off-the-shelf components and more accessible rapid prototyping and manufacturing techniques. The modular structure of the robot makes it easy to adapt to the needs of the experiment and by embracing the open source mentality, the robot can be easily reproduced or further developed by a community of users. The low cost, open nature and DIY friendliness of the robot make it an ideal candidate for HRI studies that require a large user group

Building ArtBots to attract students into STEM learning

There is an increasing worldwide demand for people educated into science and technology. Unfortunately, girls and underprivileged students are often underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. We believe that by inclusion of art in these programs, educational activities might become more attractive to a broader audience. In this work we present an example of such an educational activity: an international robotics and art week for secondary school students. This educational activity builds up on the project-based and inquiry learning framework. This article is intended as a brief manual to help others organise such an activity. It also gives insights in how we led a highly heterogeneous group of students into learning STEM and becoming science and technology ambassadors for their peers

OPEB: Open Physical Environment Benchmark for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence methods to solve continuous- control tasks have made significant progress in recent years. However, these algorithms have important limitations and still need significant improvement to be used in industry and real- world applications. This means that this area is still in an active research phase. To involve a large number of research groups, standard benchmarks are needed to evaluate and compare proposed algorithms. In this paper, we propose a physical environment benchmark framework to facilitate collaborative research in this area by enabling different research groups to integrate their designed benchmarks in a unified cloud-based repository and also share their actual implemented benchmarks via the cloud. We demonstrate the proposed framework using an actual implementation of the classical mountain-car example and present the results obtained using a Reinforcement Learning algorithm.Comment: Accepted in 3rd IEEE International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry 201

Exploring DIY practices of complex home technologies

We are surrounded by increasingly complex networks of smart objects, yet our understanding and attachment to them is rather limited. One way to support stronger end users’ engagement with such complex technologies is by involving them in the design process and with the advent of Arduino prototyping platform, even in their making. While DIY practice offers the potential for stronger user engagement with physical artifacts, we know little about end users’ DIY practice of making complex electronic technologies and their potential to ensure engagement with such devices. In this paper, we report on interviews with 18 participants from two green communities who built and used an open source DIY energy monitor, with the aim to explore the end users DIY practices of making such complex electronic devices. Findings indicate four key qualities of DIY monitors: transparent modularity, open-endedness, heirloom and disruptiveness, and how they contribute to more meaningful engagement with the DIY monitors, elevating them from the status of unremarkable objects to that of things. We conclude with three implications for design for supporting end user development of complex electronic DIY: designing transparent open hardware technologies, standardizing communication protocols for the current and future DIY of IoT; and deliberately calling for personal investment and labor in the assembling of DIY kits

Programmable photonics : an opportunity for an accessible large-volume PIC ecosystem

We look at the opportunities presented by the new concepts of generic programmable photonic integrated circuits (PIC) to deploy photonics on a larger scale. Programmable PICs consist of waveguide meshes of tunable couplers and phase shifters that can be reconfigured in software to define diverse functions and arbitrary connectivity between the input and output ports. Off-the-shelf programmable PICs can dramatically shorten the development time and deployment costs of new photonic products, as they bypass the design-fabrication cycle of a custom PIC. These chips, which actually consist of an entire technology stack of photonics, electronics packaging and software, can potentially be manufactured cheaper and in larger volumes than application-specific PICs. We look into the technology requirements of these generic programmable PICs and discuss the economy of scale. Finally, we make a qualitative analysis of the possible application spaces where generic programmable PICs can play an enabling role, especially to companies who do not have an in-depth background in PIC technology