Using RoboCup in university-level computer science education

Abstract

In the education literature, team-based projects have proven to be an effective pedagogical methodology. We have been using RoboCup challenges as the basis for class projects in undergraduate and masters level courses. This article discusses several independent efforts in this direction and presents our work in the development of shared resources and evaluation instruments. We outline three courses and describe related class projects in order to make the context of our investigation clear and make it possible for others to replicate and extend our work as well as contribute to the shared resource.

Language engineering in the context of a popular, inexpensive robot platform

“…The emerging inexpensive robot devices greatly lower the barrier for educators to adopt them as valuable teaching tools. Products such as LEGO Mindstorms RCX and NXT robot kits [21], Parallax Scribbler robot [25], and MIT Handyboard and Handy Cricket [23] have been widely used to teach AI and Robotics [20,5,19,17,16], and more recently general Computer Science courses [11,10,27,12,18,15].…”

The use of agents in human learning systems

“…With the advent of the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics Invention Kit [47] in the late 1990's, today robots are being used all over the world to engage students from early primary through undergraduate classrooms [7,65]. While some courses focus more on the hardware and engineering design aspects of robotics [42,43], others concentrate on control mechanisms, agency, behavior-based paradigms and multiagent systems [44, 50,76].…”

“…While some courses focus more on the hardware and engineering design aspects of robotics [42,43], others concentrate on control mechanisms, agency, behavior-based paradigms and multiagent systems [44, 50,76]. Many include some type of contest in the course to help motivate students as well as take advantage of fully tested and readily available environments, such as Botball [9] and RoboCup [56,65]. A broad range of experience reports have been published detaling lessons learned using robotics with younger students, in primary and secondary school classrooms and after-school programs [19].…”

“…While these agents may have teaching capabilities, they are typically less engineered for guiding learning overtly than pedagogical agents. The third type of agents are demonstrating agents, where the agents themselves are interactive mediums for learning; for example, interactive agent-based simulations [54,73] or educational robotics [19,65]. These agents embody the domain knowledge and are removed from the other components of the learning system.…”

Supporting Teacher Intervention in Unpredictable Learning Environments

“…Recently, the low-cost and highly accessible educational robot kits have gained popularity in hands-on learning environments [6]. Technical subjects, such as engineering, electronics or programming, have been taught with educational robotics.…”