SBIR Phase II: Learning About Complexity through Programming Modular Robots

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目调查机器人集合的最终用户编程。该项目的重点是开发一个可访问的最终用户编程环境，以便初中生和高中生可以创建他们自己的机器人定制集合或块，并观察这些块的行为如何影响整个机器人。建立关于复杂系统行为的强大而正确的直觉对科学家和工程师来说很重要，但在当今的技术下，孩子们很难获得这些想法并将其融入他们的思维模式。通过对建议的机器人构建工具包的探索性游戏，该工具包体现了嵌入式微处理器的分布式处理方案，儿童可以构建和观察在现实世界中运行的复杂系统。尽管存在用于软件系统的最终用户编程环境，甚至是用于少数机器人玩具的最终用户编程环境，但没有竞争的最终用户编程方法来解决模块化机器人的分布式处理。该项目旨在建立三个实验系统：基于文本的环境、可视化编程语言和“细胞自动机”界面。对当地中学生的测试将决定每种方法的优点和缺点。该项目更广泛的商业目标是为儿童提供一种工具，让他们探索复杂的全球行为是如何从局部影响中产生的。设计和构建复杂的系统使孩子们接触到各种科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)概念。编程工具包没有这里提出的最终用户编程组件，已经引入了这些重要的概念。增加一种直观的、低门槛、高上限的方法来重新编程单个模块，将为这个已经强大的复杂模型增加可扩展性。KIT的商业版本将分三个阶段发布：最初向科学中心和儿童博物馆发布，向精通技术的爱好者的核心社区发布，最后通过零售渠道向公众发布。几个科学中心已经表达了认真和持续的兴趣，希望获得这些套件的初始版本，并将它们纳入机器人教育项目和展品。除了该项目的主要目标之外，分布式嵌入式计算的终端用户编程的设计和测试还可以为该技术在快速增长的模块化机器人领域的其他应用提供信息。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project investigates end-user programming for ensembles of robots. The project focuses on the development of an accessible end-user programming environment so that middle and high school students can create their own custom ensembles or blocks of robots and observe how the blocks' behavior affect an entire robot. Building powerful and correct intuitions about the behavior of complex systems is important for scientists and engineers, but with today's technologies it is difficult for children to acquire and integrate these ideas into their mindset. Through exploratory play with the proposed robotics construction kit, which embodies a distributed processing scheme for embedded microprocessors, children can build and observe complex systems acting in the real world. Although end-user programming environments exist for software systems, and even for a few robotics toys, no competing approach to end user programming tackles distributed processing for modular robotics. The project aims to build three experimental systems: a text-based environment, a visual programming language, and a 'cellular automata' interface. Testing with local middle school students will determine the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. The broader/commercial objective of the project is to give children a vehicle to explore how complex global behaviors emerge from local effects. Designing and building complex systems exposes children to a variety of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts. The programmed kit, without the end-user programming component proposed here, already introduces these important concepts. The addition of an intuitive, low-threshold, high-ceiling approach to reprogramming individual modules will add extensibility to this already powerful model of complexity. A commercial version of kit will be released in three phases: to science centers and children's museums initially, to a core community of technically savvy enthusiasts, and finally to the public through retail channels. Several science centers have expressed serious and persistent interest in acquiring initial versions of the kits and incorporating them into robotics education programs and exhibits. In addition to the project's primary objective, the design and testing of end-user programming for distributed embedded computing can inform other applications of this technology in the rapidly growing area of modular robotics.