Roomba Pac-Man: Teaching Autonomous Robotics through Embodied Gaming

Abstract

We present an approach to teaching autonomous robotics to upper-level undergraduates through the medium of embodied games. As part of a developing course at Brown University, we have created the Roomba Pac-Man task to introduce students to different approaches to autonomous robot control in the context of a specific task. Roomba Pac-Man has been developed using commodity hardware from which students explore standard methods in robotics, namely subsumption, localization, and path planning. Our development of Roomba Pac-Man is founded upon grounding robotics in a compelling and accessible application in a non-contrived real-world environment in a manner than can be reproduced, giving students a sense of ownership.