Using Autonomous Robots and the Perception-Action Problem to Enhance Undergraduate Technical Education

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The primary goal of this project is to develop a series of laboratory exercises that use the broad appeal of actual behaving robots to draw students into a deeper understanding of several key technical concepts of importance in cognitive science. These concepts include key ideas from computer programming, hardware design (including A to D and D to A conversion and basic DC electronics), as well as some of the more technical concepts in the study of perception and action in biological systems. Both of these areas often seem daunting to students precisely because they require levels of technical sophistication beyond those reached by most beginning undergraduates at liberal arts colleges. This project is designed to provide students with a simple, autonomous robot and a user interface for communication with the robot. The basic strategies for the design of the robot itself have been well explored by others; the innovative feature of this project will be in the design of the interface for communicating with the robot. This will be a multi-layered system capable of taking the student from a very intuitive point-and-click interface for programming the robot through layers of increasing technical depth and culminating in an understanding of both the software and the hardware that implement the student's instructions. The materials to be prepared by the conclusion of this project will be designed in modular fashion so that they may be incorporated into courses other than cognitive science courses. In particular, psychology and computer science curricula at many institutions would benefit from inclusion of this laboratory. NSF FORM 1358 (1/94) i v