SBIR Phase II: Learning About Complexity through Programming Modular Robots

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二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。通过探索性地玩机器人构建工具包，孩子们可以构建和观察现实世界中的复杂系统，该工具包包含嵌入式微处理器的分布式处理方案。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。该项目的更广泛/商业目标是为儿童提供一个工具，让他们探索复杂的全球行为是如何从局部影响中产生的。设计和构建复杂系统使儿童接触到各种科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）概念。已编程的套件，没有这里提出的最终用户编程组件，已经介绍了这些重要的概念。添加一种直观的、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性模型增加可扩展性。该套件的商业版本将分三个阶段发布：首先向科学中心和儿童博物馆发布，然后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。几家科学中心对获得这些工具包的初始版本表示了认真而持久的兴趣，并将其纳入机器人教育计划和展览中。除了该项目的主要目标之外，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在快速发展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.