UWF Lego Robots

Contents

For a few years now, our "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" (CAP-5600) has incorporated Lego robots into the curriculum. The class culminates in a contest whose participants are autonomous robots created by the students of the course. Clearly, building a robot can help students acquire applied skills in system design, planning, and programming. Less obviously, experience with robotics can inform some rather difficult philosophical arguments in AI. Issues that appear intractable when discussed in the abstract seem less so in the context of autonomous robots which explore, form limited understandings of, and usefully modify a physical environment. Through the act of creating their own autonomous robots, students learn that the philosophical issues raised are interesting, and can inform, but that the objections don't prevent the real work of AI from getting done. Presenting the philosophical objections in this context acts, in a sense, as a sort of inoculation against silly, misdirected arguments that might otherwise discourage a potential AI researcher.

We use the MIT 6.270 lego robotics kits which have, for the most part, worked out nicely.

The Project

• The 1997 Contest
• The 1996 Contest
• The 1995 Contest
• Inventory of what each group (should) have
• Lego Engineering
• A very short introduction to IC.
• What happens to robots that lose.

Other Robotics Related Pages

Contest Organizers

• 1997	David Shamma

• 1996	David Shamma

• 1995	Steve Dobbs Mitch Seltzer

• 1994	Steve Dobbs Niranjan Suri