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Development of an Advanced Robotics-Kit for

Education and Entertainment of Non-Experts

Andreas Birk

, Wolfgang Gunther

, and Holger Kenn

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Belgium

birk@ieee.org, kenn@arti.vub.ac.be

Hochschule Anhalt, FB Elektrotechnik, Germany

guenther@et.hs-anhalt.de

Abstract. Sustained technology education for non-experts, e.g., school-kids and

adults without an engineering background, is a vital task for modern societies.

This paper describes a novel approach to a robot construction kit, which is de-

veloped for this purpose. The system is much more advanced than existing solu-

tions, especially the Lego Mindstorms

. Unlike existing commercial solutions,

it did not come out of mechanical constructions kits with a little bit of electron-

ics added. Instead, it is developed out of an advanced, hardware-oriented sys-

tem for university education and robotics research, the so-called CubeSystem, to

which additional functionality is added to make it handleable by non-experts. One

crucial additional component is a graphical programming environment based on

iCon-L

, which is suitable for young kids as long-term experiences with previ-

ous versions have shown. Fischertechnik

components are used as mechanical

building blocks within the construction kit.

1 Background

In recent time, a strong interest in robotics for kids [DH00] and robotics edutainment

in general [ADB

00] has emerged for several reasons. First of all, the topic has been

identified as a key to sustained technology education, a cradle of future welfare for every

modern society. The Japanese government for example started the RoboFesta initiative,

where school-kids can get in playful contact with robots. RoboFesta is an annual seriesof events, each lasting about 10 days in major cities. It will be held for the first time from

July until December 2001, layed out for a total of 800.000 participants. A second reason

for the popularity of robotics edutainment is its market potential, which can e.g. be seen

by the sales success of the Lego Mindstorms

.

2 The Limitations of Existing Approaches

There are at least two commercial approaches to robot construction kits, the Lego

Mindstorms

[MST] and the Fischertechnik Mobile Computing

kit [FT]. Both

systems grew out of passive mechanical construction kits. The computation power and

the sensor/motor-interfaces that were added to them are accordingly very minimal. Both

systems allow for example only the most basic control of a motor, namely an open

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loop activation of turning full power right or left with the motor speed depending on

the battery level of the toy. Our system in contrast is targeted at serious edutainment

projects and games, like RoboFesta mentioned above and the RoboCup Jr. initiative.

RoboCup Jr. [KSA00] is a special initiative within the Worldchampionship of Robot

Soccer or short RoboCup [KAK

97,KTS

97]. RoboCup Jr. is layed out for non-experts,

especially school-kids. An approach to the task of playing a simple one on one ball-

game showed for example the limitations of the Lego Mindstorms system [LP00]. In

addition to other dedicated solutions in this approach based on Lego Mindstorms, a

special ball has to be hand-tailored which actively emits IR. This active beacon is per-

ceived by (ab)using the Mindstorms IR-transceivers normally dedicated to communica-

tion with the host-PC.

3 A Novel Approach

The AI-lab at the Flemish Free University of Brussels (VUB) has some tradition in

developing robotics related hardware since the mid-80s. The most recent approach is

the so-calledRoboCube, which is a central part of theCubeSystem. The RoboCube, as a

central part of the CubeSystem, features a 32-bit CPU, 2 MByte of memory in the basic

version, and various I/O interfaces including RF-communication. Its technical details

are described in [BKW00,BKW98].

The CubeSystem features a special operating system, the CubeOS [Ken00], which

ranges from a micro-kernel over drivers to special high-level languages like the process

description language PDL [Ste92]. The CubeSystem is used in basic and applied re-

search, industrial projects and academic education [BWBK99,BWB

98,BB98,Bir98].

Therefore, a wide range of sensor- and motor-components exists.

However, for the use in edutainment, the existing CubeSystem platform is tailored

in order to fit the prior robotics knowledge and the budget requirements of educational

and private users. Moreover, a color C-MOS camera is chosen as main sensor, which

can conveniently detect colored patches, e.g., a ball and suitably marked other robots

or goals. Using the existing RoboCube as a starting point, the new hardware includes

the MC 68332 CPU with 1 Mb SRAM and ROM, a I2C bus with A/D and binary I/O

and four onboard motor controllers. Additionally, the new hardware includes an digitalinterface for a CMOS vision device.

To overcome the limited knowledge of the entry-level user without hindering ad-

vanced users, we chose for a visual programming environment for program develop-

ment. The visual programming environment is derived from the iCON-L system that is

used in large-scale industry and automation systems. iCON-L consists of a graphical

module-based object-oriented IDE for reactive and state-based control applications, a

virtual control CPU running on the multiple target platforms and an abstract communi-

cation interface for program download and debugging.

In the CubeSystem framework, CubeOS provides the low-level control and com-

munication functions for the virtual control processor. The suitability of graphical pro-

gramming for robotics edutainment has already been demonstratedwith LLWin, a deriva-

tion of the iCON-L system which is successfully used since several years in the Fis-

chertechnik Computing kits.

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