Teaching problem solving, computing, and information technology with robots

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the United States Military Academy uses the Lego Mindstorms robot and Java as part of the active-learning environment used to teach Information Technology (IT) and problem solving with computers. The United States Military Academy at West Point requires students to take a course on IT and problem solving with computers during their first year. This course is an important opportunity to expose undergraduate students to technology and concepts that will be a part of their daily lives and future careers. The Mindstorms robots are used in the introductory computer science course to teach problem solving skills, fundamental computer programming concepts, and to introduce the concepts of autonomous vehicles, embedded computer systems, sensors, and computer simulation. The short-term impact on the students taking the course has been very positive, and we are confident that the long-term impact will be substantial. Members of the faculty at West Point developed a computer programming environment completely in Java for the Mindstorms robot called Jago. Jago enables students to write programs in Java that will run in a graphic simulator and in the robot. Jago enables the students to visually evaluate their algorithmic solutions, which some students can more easily grasp. Based on these results we have incorporated Jago into the core IT course taught at West Point.