A multi-robot stage production is novel and challenging as different robots have to communicate and coordinate to produce a smooth performance. We made a multi-robot stage production possible using the NAO humanoid robots and the Lego Mindstorms NXT robots with a group of undergraduate women who had programming experience, but little experience with robots. The undergraduates from around the world were participating in a three day workshop – Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science (OurCS), organized by the School of Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University that provide opportunities for these undergraduates to work on computing-related research problems. They were given twelve and a half hours over a span of three days to familiarize themselves with the robots, plan the storyboard of the performance, program the robots, generate a multi-robot performance and create a presentation on what they learned and did. In this paper, we describe the tools and infrastructure we created to support the creation of a multi-robot stage production within the allocated time and explain how the time in the workshop was allocated to enable the undergraduates to complete the multi-robot stage production.
[1]
James McLurkin,et al.
Using Multi-Robot Systems for Engineering Education: Teaching and Outreach With Large Numbers of an Advanced, Low-Cost Robot
,
2013,
IEEE Transactions on Education.
[2]
Francesco Mondada,et al.
The e-puck, a Robot Designed for Education in Engineering
,
2009
.
[3]
Robert L. Avanzato.
Multi-robot Communication for Education and Research
,
2013
.
[4]
Andrea Garulli,et al.
A LEGO Mindstorms Multi-Robot Setup in the Automatic Control Telelab
,
2011
.
[5]
Anthony Mandow,et al.
Using LEGO NXT Mobile Robots With LabVIEW for Undergraduate Courses on Mechatronics
,
2011,
IEEE Transactions on Education.
[6]
D. Michael Franklin,et al.
Overwatch: An Educational Testbed for Multi-Robot Experimentation
,
2013,
FLAIRS Conference.