SBIR Phase I: Learning About Complexity through Programming Modular Robots

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目调查了机器人集成的最终用户编程。该项目的重点是开发一个可访问的终端用户编程环境，以便中学生和高中生可以创建他们自己的定制集成或机器人模块，并观察模块的行为如何影响整个机器人。对于科学家和工程师来说，建立关于复杂系统行为的强大而正确的直觉是很重要的，但在今天的技术条件下，孩子们很难获得并将这些想法整合到他们的思维中。通过探索他们提出的机器人构建工具包，其中包含嵌入式微处理器的分布式处理方案，孩子们可以构建和观察在现实世界中运行的复杂系统。为这样的系统编程是困难的：要解决的问题是确定有效的最终用户编程范例，以便儿童编程分布式嵌入式系统，从而构建有关复杂系统行为的心智模型。尽管最终用户编程环境适用于软件系统，甚至适用于一些机器人玩具，但没有与之竞争的最终用户编程方法解决模块化机器人的分布式处理问题。该项目旨在建立三个实验系统：一个基于文本的环境，一个可视化编程语言和一个“细胞自动机”界面。对当地中学生进行测试将确定每种方法的优缺点。该项目的结果预计将对儿童对复杂的全球行为如何从局部影响中产生的理解产生广泛的影响。设计和构建复杂系统使儿童接触到各种科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）概念。添加一种直观的、低门槛、高上限的方法来重新编程集成模块，将为这个已经强大的复杂性模型增加可扩展性。除了主要目标之外，分布式嵌入式计算的最终用户编程的设计和测试可以为该技术的其他应用提供信息。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project investigates end-user programming for ensembles of robots. The project focusses on the developmnent 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 thr 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. Programming such systems is difficult: the problem to be solved is to identify effective end-user programming paradigms for children to program distributed embedded systems, and thereby construct mental models about the behavior of complex systems. 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 outcome of the project is expected to have a broad impact on children's understanding of how complex global behaviors emerges from local effects. Designing and building complex systems exposes children to a variety of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts. The addition of an intuitive, low-threshold, high-ceiling approach to reprogramming ensemble modules will add extensibility to this already powerful model of complexity. In addition to the primary objective, the design and testing of end-user programming for distributed embedded computing can inform other applications of this technology.