Transcript Emilie Featherston - Poster - Texas Tech University Departments

Enhancing the Two-way Communication Between a 3-D Programming
Interface and Fluke Robots using Dorothy
Emilie Featherston, Susan Urban, Mohan Sridharan, and Joseph Urban
Texas Tech University 2013 NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates Site Program
Dorothy Overview
Introduction
Results and Contributions
• Past work with Dorothy has enabled the
bidirectional communication between Alice and the
Scribbler-Fluke robot.
• Dorothy stands for the Design of Robot Oriented Thinking to Help Youth [1].
• Studies have shown that teaching students computational thinking [3] through 3-D programming and
robotics enhances the learning process [2,4].
• Dorothy integrates the Alice 3-D environment and the Scribbler-Fluke robots to create a synchronous
virtual and real world environment as a way of presenting computational thinking to K-12 students.
• Students can program a robot in the virtual world and see the action on a robot in the real world.
• This research explored features that can be used to
teach more advanced programming to beginning
programmers in computing.
• Commands from Dorothy can be sent to the
Scribbler-Fluke robot such as to move forward, to
turn left or right, or to make a sound.
• Questions can be asked of the Scribbler-Fluke robot.
The robot will return information from its sensors,
which include infra-red obstacle detection, light
detection, and a camera.
• Through visualizing the real world in the virtual
world, students can see decision statements take
effect in real time, demonstrating the two-way
communication between Dorothy and the ScribblerFluke robot, by sending commands and data between
the two.
An edge of
the box.
• The color detection adds another sensor of the
Scribbler-Fluke robot into the Dorothy environment,
which further expands Dorothy’s capabilities.
Objectives
• Create a world in Dorothy that visualizes the real
world into the virtual world.
• Implement the use of the Fluke’s camera to allow
for color detection.
• Create a world in Dorothy to show robot-to-robot
communication and problem solving.
• Demonstrating the use of the communication between
two robots through Dorothy allows for more
advanced uses of this feature to be explored in future
research.
Figure 3. The visualized box that the robot was
traveling around in the real-world.
Figure 1. Alice code that brings objects into the
virtual world if something is detected in the real
world.
Figure 2. Myro commands of what
the robot is thinking during
execution.
Future Work
Visualizing the World in Alice
Target robot
• A Dorothy world was created to show how the real
world can be visualized in the virtual world by
using Alice and the Scribbler-Fluke robots.
• The Scribbler-Fluke robot’s Infra-red sensors are
used so that when an object is detected in the realworld, an object is shown in the virtual world, as
shown in Figure 3.
• Creating a lesson plan that incorporates the new
features of Dorothy.
• Implement the new features in a classroom.
a) Turn Left
b) Stay Straight
c) Turn right
Figure 4. The three different states that the robot can see. It can choose to turn left, stay
straight, or turn right, respectively.
Color Detection
• One robot makes decisions and communicates
commands to the other robot through Dorothy.
• Adapt Dorothy to Alice 3.0.
• Adapt Alice to allow the ability to dynamically create
objects during runtime.
[1] South, D., Ray, A., Thomas, K., Graham, S., Huff, S., Rainge, S.,
Shuman, M., Sridharan, M., Urban, S. D. & Urban, J. E. (2013).
DOROTHY: Integrating Graphical Programming with Robotics to
Stimulate Interest in Computing Careers, 2013 Alice Simposium,
Durham, NC, June, 2013.
[2] Alice (2009) Alice, www.alice.org.
[3]Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of
the ACM,49(3), 33-35.
[4] http://wiki.roboteducation.org/Myro_Hardware
• This function has been used to show how one robot
can follow another based on color.
• A Dorothy world was created to allow for the
bidirectional communication between two robots.
Figure 5. The ability for the robot to
sense where the color red around it
is implemented into Alice. This
allows for users to easily access
this feature in an easy drag-anddrop way.
References:
• A function for the robot was created that returns a
number based on where the color red is in the view
of the robot’s camera, as shown in Figure 4.
Communication of Multiple Robots
• All of these features can be implemented into a more
advanced curriculum for computing education..
Figure 6. To the right shows the commands to detect
for obstacles that the first robot was given. The top
picture above shows that the second robot turns
when the first robot returns over 1200 meaning an
obstacle is found. The bottom picture above shows
the Alice code that utilizes this communication.
DISCLAIMER: This material is based upon work supported by the National
Science Foundation and the Department of Defense under Grant No.
CNS-1263183. An opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendation
expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Department of
Defense.