An Online Robot System for Projects in Robot Intelligence

Abstract

Online robot systems can significantly increase the number of students that can participate in practical robotics and artificial intelligence projects and improve the quality of the learning environment provided by educators for these topics. We present an online educational environment based on employing toys as simple robotic devices and using vision-based sensing as the basis for guiding simple object manipulation operations. The paper describes the hardware and software environment that was developed to create the online system and reports on the use of the environment to support a task requiring students to implement a simple stop-look-act control cycle. The use of the environment by the students was monitored throughout the period of the project and is described in this paper. The student evaluation of the project is also described. In both cases the results are analysed and the main conclusions are presented. In general, the experience of the students was positive and lessons learned are being integrated into future systems and projects.