Making Intelligent Walking Robots Accessible to Educators : A Brain and Sensor Pack for Legged Mobile Robots

Wheeled robot platforms have reached an ease of use that allows AI educators to easily incorporate them into their course to provide an opportunity for students to program physically embodied agents. This invites an opportunity for students to learn AI techniques for dealing with the physical environment and, just as importantly, brings an added interest and excitement to the course. Legged robot platforms have yet to reach the same ease of use. These robots add interesting problem dimensions and an additional level of inspiration to the AI class. This paper describes SkwelZone, a generalized system that brings affordable, programmable, legged robot platforms with reusable sensors, a microcontroller, and a common computing platform into AI curricula.