CSU, Chico News

Three faculty members in the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology have received a $346,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to use people’s fascination with robots as a means to attract new students and teach them more creatively.

Robots battling like sumo wrestlers, robots playing soccer, robots performing search and rescue missions… approximately $250,000 of the grant is earmarked for acquiring robots that students can learn to endow with these capabilities.

The grant will help fund three initiatives in the college this academic year:

In January 2004, the college will be establishing an Intelligent Systems Lab, where faculty from different departments can teach students how to program and control robots of varying complexity.

Starting in the spring 2004 semester, a new class, Robotics and Machine Intelligence, will be team-taught by the three principal investigators of the NSF grant: Computer science professors Benjoe Juliano and Renee Renner and mechanical and mechatronic engineering professor Ramesh Varahamurti.

In the summer of 2004, a summer robotics camp for junior-high girls will be offered. One of the class’s goals is to attract a greater number of girls to the mathematical sciences and engineering fields.

Juliano said the impetus for the grant extends back four years, when the college recognized it needed to attract a wider and more diverse group of students. Faculty heard about other colleges using robotics as a way to appeal to young people.

Juliano and his colleagues applied for the very competitive NSF grant in January 2003, and heard they were successful at the start of the fall 2003 term.

Along with the robots, the grant pays for two graduate students and two undergraduate students as research assistants for three years. Ken Derucher, dean of the college, is contributing to the effort by making lab space available in O’Connell Technology Center 431 and providing faculty release time from teaching to set up the lab and prepare the new robotics curricula.

Three different levels of robots are being purchased and will be used by students, Juliano said. Basic robots will consist of LEGO Mindstorms robot kits, a popular consumer product which can be put together in different configurations. These robots will be used in the summer robotics camp and some of the introductory courses using the Intelligent Systems Lab.

The lab is acquiring five different types of intermediate robots. These robots will include Sumo-bot, by TAB Electronics and McGraw-Hill, which will be used as a textbook for the new Robotics class. Sumo-bot’s multiple capabilities include seeking and avoiding light sources, following walls to solve mazes, covering various types of terrain and, quoting the manufacturer, “mechanical features designed to withstand the shock of combat.”

Advanced robots will include ones made by iRobot, the company that produces Roomba, the well-publicized robot vacuum for home use. IRobot’s chairman is Rod Brooks, director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Juliano said this level of robot is expensive: Three of the advanced robots - all-terrain robots with vision and GPS navigation - are $20,000 each “without any of the extras included.”

Robots will be used competitively and cooperatively, Juliano said. While some will undoubtedly engage in contests a la the TV “robot battle” shows, others will be programmed to work cooperatively. “While teaching robots to play soccer may seem like a game, it is an important step for intelligent systems to learn to work together,” Juliano said.

An important task some of the new robots will be taught is search and rescue. Juliano said robots were used in missions at the Sept. 11 disaster sites, and the NSF grant proposal directs CSU, Chico to work on building similar intelligent robots.

For all the excitement and curiosity surrounding robots, they are also powerful learning tools for students, Juliano said. To make a robot truly intelligent and autonomous - not directed by a remote control device - can be a strenuous computer programming task. Some commands employ fuzzy logic, a mathematical theory of partial truths that is one of Juliano’s areas of expertise. “When we tell a robot to go left or right when an object is near, what do we mean by ‘near’? Commands like that require some sophisticated programming,” he said.

The challenges presented creating intelligent robots spans the different departments in the college, Juliano said. He expects a wide variety of classes will use the Intelligent Systems Lab.

For additional information about the lab, go to the lab’s Web site.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2003 at 10:16 am and is filed under 2003 Fall.