Robotics at Vaughn College
By Rex Wong
President Sharon DeVivo with students in technology department
Robots can serve human society in many ways. As the society is aging and the manpower of workforce is diminishing, the request for domestic service robots to help the elderlies live independently becomes more and more imminent. On the other hand, due to the concern of growing insecurity in many aspects of modern day life, home security surveillance is the one of most important issues. Therefore using robot to check house conditions when we are not home also gains more and more attention these days. In view of this situation, we propose an educational module which utilizes the basic need of our daily life to motivate the learning of engineering and technology for students either in STEM related programs or non-STEM curricula. Through this endeavor, students can gain an insight to engineering systems and see how the scientific knowledge and technology can be blended together to provide a meaningful application to enhance our life. To further manifest the close relationship between knowledge used in real situation, we use a robotic project to show the multi-disciplinary nature of robotics, mechatronics, or any practical application. The robot students will build can attend the household, or patrol to search for any anomaly condition, for example, we might have left the lights on while we are out and the robot can tell us by sending a message to our cell-phone about the condition. This scenario is typical example of robotic application and will motivate anyone wishing to learn how mobile robot works. In order to alleviate the inertia of difficulty which might hinder the learning process, we adapt LEGO MindStorms kit as the basic platform to build the robot and use its built-in programming environment, NXT-G as initial algorithm development tool. Once students grasp the entire process, they are encouraged to move on to open-source platforms or ingredients to build their own robots. #
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