Session F1F ROBOTICS CONTESTS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION Chan Jin Chung1 and Lisa Anneberg2 Abstract - Autonomous robotics systems encompass the rich nature of integrated systems that includes mechanical, electrical, and computational components. Robotics has been used as a carrot to attract students to the science and engineering career and there have been various autonomous robot competitions. Research oriented competitions are also organized to promote the development of robotics technologies. As a result, competitions can provide many benefits to students, academia, industry, and society at large. In this paper, current status of robot competitions world wide for computer science education and research are summarized. Especially, the concept and results of Robofest (www.robofest.net) started at Lawrence Tech University since 2000 are introduced. Then detailed methodologies and environments to introduce robotics in traditional computer science classes are suggested. As a conclusion, future directions regarding robot contests for computer science education and research will be discussed and suggested.
INTRODUCTION Interest in robotics is intensifying; the attractiveness of robotics from the programming perspective is apparent: the semantics of programs are immediately recognized. For this reason, robotics programming is becoming more popular in classes. Recently, according to the new Computing Curricular 2001 Computer Science Final Report [1], the area of “Intelligent Systems (IS)” is defined as computer science body of knowledge and requires the following units for all students in all computer science degree programs. • • •
IS1. Fundamental issues in intelligent systems (1) IS2. Search and constraint satisfaction (5) IS3. Knowledge representation and reasoning (4)
The numbers in parenthesis represent the minimum number of hours required to cover this material in a lecture format. Elective topics suggested by the final reports are • • • •
IS4. Advanced search IS5. Advanced knowledge representation and reasoning IS6. Agents IS7. Natural language processing
• • •
IS8. Machine learning and neural networks IS9. AI planning systems IS10. Robotics
Robotics is listed as an elective topic for undergraduate Computer Science degree programs and the report suggests the following introductory topics as an overview of robotics: state-of-the-art robot systems, planning vs. reactive control, uncertainty in control, sensing, and world models. After the overview, it suggests the following topics such as configuration space, robot planning, various sensing, robot programming, and navigation and control. Also the committee defines its learning objectives as the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
7.
Outline the potential and limitations of today's state-ofthe-art robot systems. Implement configuration space algorithms for a 2D robot and complex polygons. Implement simple motion planning algorithms. Explain the uncertainties associated with sensors and how to deal with those uncertainties. Design a simple control architecture. Describe various strategies for navigation in unknown environments, including the strengths and shortcomings of each. Describe various strategies for navigation with the aid of landmarks, including the strengths and shortcomings of each.
Even if it may be possible to use simulated environment only to teach concepts of robotics, this paper discuses the use of real robots in class, since it will give more realistic motivations and outcomes to students. In this paper, first problems of introducing robotics in classes are discussed. There have been various autonomous robot competitions to promote the development of robotics technologies. Here we would like to focus on using robotics competitions in Computer Science Education. Current status of robotics competitions is summarized and then methodologies and playful environment for computer science classes are suggested.
1
Chan Jin Chung, Lawrence Technological University, Computer Science, Southfield, Michigan 48075,
[email protected]
2
Lisa Anneberg, Lawrence Technological University, Electrical Computer Engineering, Southfield, Michigan 48075,
[email protected]
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Session F1F POTENTIAL OBSTACLES IN I NTRODUCING ROBOTICS IN CLASS
class project. Next section summarizes current status of various robot contests.
In introducing robotics in the computer science classroom environment, one is faced with the following challenges and problems:
ROBOTICS COMPETITIONS
1.
2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13.
The choice of robotics platform (kits) is difficult. Instructors can select textbooks by simply reading contents and some chapters. However, it is not easy to select a robot platform for robotics class without through testing it in advance. Once the robot platform has been selected, it is common that we need to purchase extra and spare parts, sensors and actuators. The cost of introducing real-robot in class is expensive in general. It requires more lecture time than traditional Intelligence Systems or Artificial Intelligence class, since the instructor needs to teach basics of robotics, robotics programming, sensors, actuators, communications, basic mechanics, and electronics. The topic itself includes additional computer science topics such as real-time systems issues and synchronization of parallel processes, network programming, and distributed computing. If students did not have enough background, it is not easy to run the class smoothly. In general, the area is too wide. It includes mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and computer science Debugging of robotics programming is not easy, not only because real-time programming issues but also because non-deterministic hardware problems, especially unreliable hardware component was purchased. Robotics class requires usually larger a spacious laboratory with carpet with larger tables. Usually faster computers are required especially for robot vision. Grading is different and more difficult than that of other traditional computer science courses. Assigning projects requires creative ideas to motivate and energize students. Designing and planning class projects requires more work since it need to include traditional AI topics as well as robotics. Once robotics project descriptions are given to the students, it is usual to modify it, since there exist many unknown, unpredicted situations due to the nature of real world, not virtual world.
Design contests have a long tradition in engineering education. A well-designed challenge provides an environment for motivating students, learning problemsolving techniques, and promoting creative thinking [2, 5]. IEEE proposed Micromouse autonomous robot contest in 1977. In 1979 the IEEE Spectrum ran the first Micromouse competition and many hundreds of these contests are run every year [3]. The challenge for each University is to design and build the Micromouse that can find the center of a maze in the fastest time. The robot must be completely self-contained; it cannot be run by remote control, nor can it have an umbilical cord to receive data or power. Figure 1 shows a sample course [4]. Some competitions are still under the auspices of the IEEE but many more are not [3]. After the success of the Micromouse maze contests, there have been various robot contests around. Trinity College has started annual fire-fighting robot contest, since 1994. The challenge is to build a mobile robot that can move through a model of a house, detect fire (a lit candle) and then extinguish it. Robots that accomplish this task in the shortest time win. The contest became one of the most popular autonomous robot contests in the USA. In 2002, more than 1,000 robots participated in the competition including regionals and 17 countries have participated in the international contest. Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) was organized to identify and present unmanned vehicle applications, benefits, and information to government decision-makers, academia, congress and the general public. AUVS has been organizing high tech collegiate competitions for autonomous unmanned air, ground, and undersea vehicles. Research oriented competitions have historically played an important role in the development in Artificial Intelligence. The AAAI (American Association of Artificial Intelligence) Mobile robotics competition series, begun in 1992, has been credited with driving improvements in research platforms [6]. 2002 AAAI robotics competition includes various challenges including Rescue robot competitions.
A possible way to solve the problems 11-13 above, one could consider to reuse existing robotics competitions as the
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Session F1F
Figure 1 Micromouse Maze
Figure 3. The First Autonomous Robot Football Tournament
(Courtesy of University of Massachusetts Lowell)
(Courtesy of ARFT97)
FIRA (Federation of International Robot-soccer Association) hosted the first robot soccer tournament in 1996. The game was played by a team of robots controlled by a host computer with a vision system over the playing field, as depicted in figure 2.
RoboCup is an international joint project to promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup also chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is by 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer. In order for a robot team to actually perform soccer game, various technologies must be incorporated including: design principles of autonomous agents, multi-agent collaboration, strategy acquisition, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor-fusion. RoboCup is a task for a team of multiple fast-moving robots under a dynamic environment. One of the major applications of RoboCup technologies is a search and rescue in largescale disaster. RoboCup initiatived RoboCup-Rescue project to specifically promote research in socially significant issues. The first RoboCup was held in Nagoya, Japan from August 23 - 29, 1997 [9]. Robotics has been used as a carrot to attract grade school students to the science and engineering career. BotBall by KISS Institute for Practical Robotics (KIPR) is an annual robotics contest using Handy Board for high school student teams. They provide supplementary, extra curricular and professional development classes to afterschool class environments. Recently the program has been extended to include college teams. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) intends to conduct a challenge of autonomous ground vehicles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas in March of 2004. A cash award of $1 million will be granted to the team that fields the first vehicle to complete the designated route within a specified time limit. The purpose of the challenge is to leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that can be applied to military requirements [10].
Figure 2. FIRA robot soccer environment (Courtesy of FIRA)
The choice of soccer as the domain for robot competitions were partially driven by the desire to have well understood multi-agent problem as well as to introduce entertainment for the audience. As you can see the FIRA robots were not fully autonomous. Perhaps the ARFT (Autonomous Robot Football Tournament) will be recorded as the first fully autonomous robot soccer tournament in robot history. It was held in July 1997 at the Fourth European Conference On Artificial Life in Brighton. All the teams were required to use Khepera robots equipped with linear vision turrets and yellow tennis balls were used instead of soccer balls [7] as seen in Figure 3. This Khepera robot soccer is continued in FIRA and AMiRE (Autonomous Minirobotics for Research and Edutainment) [8].
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Session F1F Robotics competitions explained this section are summarized in table 1.
PROBLEMS O F INCORPORATING ROBOT COMPETITIONS INTO COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASSES
using Lego Light sensors and Infrared message sending capability of Lego RCX. A software task is continuously sending infrared messages. Another task measures fluctuations in the light intensity that is reflected from objects. The higher the fluctuation, the closer the robot is to an object [11].
In order to encourage computer science and engineering students to participate in robotics competitions mentioned above, one could face the following problems: 1. It is not affordable to build robots 2. It is not easy especially for pure Computer Science student to construct robot hardware and takes extra class time 3. Robot hardware is not reliable, usually 4. It is not easy to set-up the playing field in the existing classroom environments. Also it is very costly. 5. Not every student can travel for the competition Here, we would like to introduce our methodologies to incorporate robotics into classes through Robofest started in 2000 at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan [12]. ROBOFEST EXPERIMENTATIONS AND EXPERIENCE In the late 1990th , the introduction of low-cost autonomous robotics kits such as Lego Mindstorms has led to an explosion of interest in robotics. Many students from grade school through graduate school all over the world now get hands-on experience learning the fundamental principles of science and engineering by designing and programming robots. Robofest has started with an idea of providing affordable playful environment for all ages, grade students to graduate students. Robofest challenges are demoting dead reckoning but promoting adaptable feedback loop controls since the dimension of the playing field is unknown. Robofest has challenges for grade schools, but in this paper experience from only collegiate division will be discussed. One of the challenges for collegiate division in the first Robofest in 2000 was “robo tag game”. The playing field and initial positions is shown in Figure 4. For a tagger, the mission is to detect and touch a moving target (taggee) in a ring. For a taggee , the mission is to detect and escape from a moving opponent (tagger). In the beginning of the game, the tagger must face the opposite direction of the taggee as shown in the figure 4. A lamp bulb located at the center of the robot is used to detect each other. This problem involves sensing, adaptability, navigation, and control. We could provide each student a Lego Mindstorms kit and they were required to use NQC (Not Quite C). In this way we could solve all the problems 1 through 5 explained in the previous section. The method to detect the opponent robot was implementing a kind of proximity sensors by
Figure 4 Robofest 2000 Robo Tag Game It was fun to watch the games, but lucky factor played a great role due to limitations of Lego robot capabilities, because the range of the proximity sensor was around 20-30 cm, which was too short. Another limitation was due to the fact that Lego RCX allows maximum three sensors, but they needed to connect more than that for the better real-time decisions, even if we stacked Light and Touch sensors on one input port. Since the biggest problem encountered in 2000 was the capability of the robotics platform, Robofest 2001 Collegiate Division required the use of Handy Boards developed by MIT and used in their 6.270 class for undergraduate and graduate students [2]. The mission was delivering a package, detecting a balloon using distance sensors and popping it, picking raffle tickets, grabbing a package, and return home, while following a dashed line. The problem itself was not so difficult but Computer Science students had difficulties and spent a lot of time in making IR sensors, connecting range sensors to the board which required soldering and hot-gluing. Another problem experienced from this game is that there are limitations of robot competition as a pedagogical tool since students cannot innovate and be creative within the domain of the contest. Based on the experience from two previous events, Robofest 2003 introduced exhibition divisions. It was quite successful, because students were more creative. College exhibition division projects include flying robotics blimp controlled by Handy Board with GPS and robots controlled by laptops and Lego CCD cameras as shown in figure 5.
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Session F1F ROBOTENNIS Based on the three years of experience of using robotics contes ts in computer science classes, we found the following facts about robotics component for college students: • Lego robots are wonderful tools for teaching basic computer science concepts • However, it is not enough for collegiate robotics contests • Micro robot kits such as Handy Boards are not suitable for Computer Science classes focusing only software • Bigger robots are better for contests and give more motivation to the students • Laptop robot platform seems best for college computer science students
Figure 5 Laptop Robot The merits of the robot were it was very affordable and easier to build compared to that of Handy Board robots. We could purchase all the materials except motors and motor control board from local hardware stores. Used camera was Lego vision camera and we could find SDK (software Development Kit) provided by Logitec for free on the web for free. We were using Microsoft Speech application SDK for the robot to enable hearing and talking. The robot could understand predefined voice commands such as “find red ball”, search the ball, move toward to the ball, and could speak out using TTS (text to speech) functions. The robot became very popular and motivated many young students during Robofest 2002 as you can see in figure 6.
Figure 6.
Based on the above experience, we have designed a game called RoboTennis, for Robofest 2003. The game is to push (ping) the ball to the other side of the court within 10 seconds. Objectives of this challenge is to demonstrate an autonomous robot capable of tracking, following, pushing a ball while keeping track of its location and orientation. Also it is required to recognize and keep track of the opponent robot and its location for winning game strategies. We can view this is a small subset of robot soccer. Since the robot should not pass the net (two lines), there is little chance to break robot platforms by collisions. It is very easy to build the playing field. Any dark surface can be used and two lines can be made using while duct tapes as shown in Figure 7. The robot must fit inside a box of dimensions: width 16” and length 16” (No height limitation). During the game, the robot may not extend its dimensions. The robot may use any number of sensors, cameras, and motors. It must use only one latoptop (notebook) computer for the main control as well as vision processing. It may use peripheral micro controllers. This is how to start a match. A referee tosses a coin. Each robot must tell either head or tail by a program. Then the referee shows the coin. The player winning the toss may choose the ball to serve or the court to start. Service is done the following way. First, the receiver robot must be located anywhere in its courts. Then the server robot is located while touching the service wall. When a referee gives the service signal after locating the ball at the center of the server’s court, the human players must start their robots in order to push (ping) the ball to the other side. After the referee’s signal, no human player can touch the robot until either robot scores a point. When the server gets a point: • Service is not done, but the receiver violates the netline. • The receiver could not push back (pong) the ball within 10 seconds to the server’s court When the receiver gets a point:
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Session F1F • •
Regardless of the service, the server violates the netline. The server could not push (ping) the ball within 10 seconds to the receiver court
The service is alternated after each point until the end of the match. The court will be changed after each set. In order to win a match, the robot needs to win two sets first. A player wins a set if it gets four points for the first time. No deuce is considered. A red ball with d iameter is 12” is used.
Figure 7 RoboTennis playing field
CONCLUSION We wish we ourselves had learned computer science this way.
REFERENCES [1] The Joint Task Force on Computing Curricular IEEE Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery, “Computing Curricular 2001 Computer Science Final Report”, December 15, 2001 [2] Martin, F. G., “Robotic Explorations: A Hands-on Introduction to Engineering”, 1/e, Prentice Hall, 2001, ISBN 0-13-089568-7 [3] www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/robotics-faq [4] http://www.uml.edu/Dept/EE/IEEE/projects.htm [5] Murphy, R., “Using robot competitions in the classroom to promote intellectual development”, AI magazine, vol. 21, no. 1, pp.77-99 [6] Osuka, K., Murphy, R., Schultz, A, “USAR Competitions for Physically Situated Robots”, IEEE Robotics and Automation Mag., Vol. 9, No. 3, Sep. 2002, pp.26-33. [7] http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/RFC/FirstARFT.html [8] http://wwwhni.uni-paderborn.de/sct/symposium [9] www.robocup.org [10] www.arpa.mil/grandchallenge [11] Knudsen, J., “The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots”, O'Reilly, 1999 [12] www.robofest.net
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Session F1F
Contest name
Brief description
History
Age
*1
web
Micromouse
Maze
ewh.ieee.org/r6/coastal_la/MM _Page.htm
Flying robots
College. Now also for K-12 College
Cmp
Aerial robotics competition AAAI Mobile robot contest
Proposed by IEEE, 1977. Micro robots Various similar contests all around the world Since 1991 by AUVSI Micro robot controller
Cmp
Since 1992
Any
College
Intelligent ground vehicle race competition Fire-fighting robot Maze with a candle to be extinguished
Since 1993 by AUVSI
Any
College
Cmp and Exh Cmp
avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IA RCLaunchPoint.html www.cs.uml.edu/aaairobot
FIRA
Robot Soccer
Micro robots, midsize robots, legged robots. Semi-autonomous and autonomous
RoboCup
Robot Soccer: simulation league, small-size robot league, middle-size robot league, four-legged robot, league, and humanoid league Autonomous underwater robots locate and identify the height of 17 barcoded platforms New challenges every year New challenges every year
Federation of International Robotsoccer Association. Started as Microrobot Soccer in 1996. Since 1997. Robot rescue and Junior division added.
Rescue challenge as well as various tasks
IGVC
Underwater vehicle competition Bot Ball Robofest
DARPA grand challenge
Unmanned autonomous ground vehicle from LA to Las Vegas
Robot platform used
Trinity college since1994. Micro robots International competition
www.igvc.org
College. also for K12 No restriction
Cmp
www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/
Cmp
www.fira.net
Any autonomous robots
No restriction
Cmp
www.robocup.org
Since 1998 by AUVSI
any
College
Cmp
www.auvsi.org/competitions/w ater.cfm
Since 1998
Handy Board
K-12 and college Lego RCX, Micro robots, K-12 and and Laptop robots college
Cmp
www.botball.org
Cmp and Exh
www.robofest.net
Any
Cmp
www.arpa.mil/grandchallenge
Since 2000 at Lawrence Tech University. Affordable. Contest for everyone. 2004. One million dollar prize
No restriction
*1) Exhib ition or Competition Table 1. Summary of Robot Contests
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