Experiences teaching CS1 with
Personal Robots
The Institute for Personal Robots in Education
Jay Summet, Georgia Institute of Technology with Tucker Balch, Doug Blank, Mark Guzdial, Deepak Kumar,
Stewart Tansley, Jared Jackson, Natasha Eilbert, Keith
O'Hara, Daniel Walker, Gaurav Gupta, and Monica
Sweat

Help! My robot's gone crazy!
The Institute for Personal Robots in Education
Jay Summet, Georgia Institute of Technology with Tucker Balch, Doug Blank, Mark Guzdial, Deepak Kumar,
Stewart Tansley, Jared Jackson, Natasha Eilbert, Keith
O'Hara, Daniel Walker, Gaurav Gupta, and Monica
Sweat

Why make CS education more fun and effective?

IPRE Overview
• Mission: Make Computer Science education more fun and effective, using
Personal Robots
• Focused on CS1 education at the undergraduate level
• But we also want to promote pushing down to K-12 and extending to more advanced CS / ECE classes!

IPRE: Lead Institutions
• Georgia Institute of Technology
– Tier 1 research university, founded in 1885
– 15,000 students
– 2/3 of the undergraduate students are male
• Bryn Mawr College
– Liberal arts college, founded in 1885
– 1,200 students
– Mostly female students

IPRE Principle Investigators
• Tucker Balch, Director, GaTech
• Douglas Blank, co-Director, BMC
• Mark Guzdial, GaTech
• Deepak Kumar, BMC
• Stewart Tansley, MSR

Not your typical robots!
• How are robots seen in popular culture?

6 P's of IPRE
• Personal – Every student owns a robot
• Price – Substitute for a textbook
• Pedagogy – Robot designed by the curriculum
• Peripheral – Robot is treated as a device
• Performances – Creativity & expression
• Programming Languages – High level, interpreted, break the compile/debug cycle

Personal Robot
• Small enough to carry in a backpack
• Wireless, controlled from computer
• Interactive and easy to program
• Personalizable
• More than “just a robot”

Current Prototype: Scribbler with IPRE Fluke
$149
RobotEducation.org

Current Prototype: Scribbler with IPRE Fluke
• Bluetooth wireless control
• Movement
• Sound (beeps)
• Light Sensors
• Obstacle Sensors
• Camera!

How to afford a robot for every student?
• Transfer costs to the students
– $150 is close to the cost of a science textbook (in the US)
• Amortize the cost over time
– $150 robot is a $50 robot if you use it for three classes
– 30 robots cost $4,500

How Reliable?
• But what if a robot breaks?
• How frequently to robots break?
• Parallax offers a 90 day guarantee on the
Scribbler, but a 16 week semester is 112 days!

How Reliable? More reliable than student's laptops!
• Laptop problems (software as well as hardware) were more prevalent than robot problems
• Having a few hot-spares to lend/rent is still a good idea (Project groups!)
• Failure rate around 1-2%, comparable to most consumer electronics

Language: Python
• Looks like English
• Indentation matters
• Interpreted / Interactive
• Easy to learn, but powerful
• Job examples:
– Google
– Amazon
– Industrial Light & Magic

Software: Goals
• Easy to learn, but doesn't seem simplistic as the student grows in experience:
“pedagogically scalable”
• Easy to use: no compile-download-run
• Instant gratification: interactive, dynamic
• Open source: available for study or change
• Cross-platform: runs on Linux, Mac, Win32

Myro/Robot Demo!
• Turn on Bluetooth
• Turn on Robot

Programming as a social activity

Towards an Accessible,
Engaging Environment for new, diverse students
• Competitions? Collaborations!
• Race? Orchestra!
• Compute factorial? Dance!
• Battlebots? A robot performance!
• Write a program of your own design!

The First Assignment
• Make your robot dance!
– Musical accompaniment
• Function calls
• Encapsulation
• Looping

A CS1 Assignment: Maze
• Data from sensors
• IF statements
• Recursion
• Saving state

Using the Camera
• 3 person teams
• Week 1: Generate Special Effects (FX)!
• Week 2: Shoot a movie
– Robot camera
– Robot actors
– Using your special FX

Image Special FX
• Teaches looping through data
• Nested FOR loops
• Data Representation
– 0-255 – One byte per color
– 24 bit color – 3 bytes per pixel

Movies
• Lists of individual frames
• Editing scenes together
• Playing scenes backwards
• Rendering at 1/2 or 2x speed
• Overlay text and graphics?

Robot Performances
• 3 person teams
• “Live” performance
• Synchronization of robots
• Graded on technical correctness, but also entertainment value, costumes and story

Student Movies

Summary
• Student owned personal robots provide a concrete context for learning computer science
• Can be done relatively inexpensively
• Creative, non-confrontational group assignments stress the social and creative nature of computer science

What was the most important or interesting thing that you learned in this course?
“That computer science can be creative!”

You can do this!
• Software and textbooks are free – use
AS-IS or modify to fit your needs
• Print materials yourself or buy online from print on demand publishers http://wiki.RobotEducation.org

You can do this!
• Educator materials available:
– Lecture Notes
– Power-point presentations
– Assignments & Labs http://wiki.RobotEducation.org

Hardware?
• We sell the robots and FLUKE upgrade modules from a non-profit company
• Looking to encourage 3rd party manufactures
• Contact us if you want the schematics / designs www.RobotEducation.org

Questions?
For more information please visit:
Play with the Robots: Demo Booth 7

IPRE Research Goals
• Hardware – Robust, inexpensive robot
• Software – Easy for students to learn
• Curricular Materials – Focus on learning CS
• Assessment – Make sure it works
• Adoptable – Easy for instructors to adopt!

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