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Re: [Phys-l] Robotics course help?



On Jan 12, 2008, at Jan 12:1:12 PM, ovk wrote:
Has anyone on the ap-physics or phys-l listserves taught a course
like this?
5 days a week for 14 weeks

Any concrete suggestions or references?


I have just finished a 14-week college course, not exactly like yours but possibly similar, for students without any programming experience. My goals for the course may not be the same as yours, but I can give you some of my ideas. We also used the Mindstorms NXT.

Basically, I wanted to use robotics (and artificial intelligence, which was another part of the course) to teach students programming. I wanted the skills learned to be transferable to other situations, like physics, economics, etc... As such, I did *not* use the graphical language that comes with the NXT. This language is probably ok for middle-school, possibly high school, but I prefer a "real" language if it is to be transferrable. That being said, I wanted the language to be *easy* too, and free. I chose Python (http://www.python.org), which I find to be the easiest language I've to program in that I've ever used, yet is powerful enough for places like Google and NASA to do serious work with.

Unfortunately, there was no port of NXT to Python, so I wrote a translator between Python and NXC (Not Exactly C, http:// bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/) which is a free C-like language for the NXT. I can send you (or anyone else interested) this translator, which I intend to put up on google code in the next few weeks. It worked very well through the semester, and the students had other python projects, so it was nice to use just one language.


Pointers to friendly, local, low budget, competitions?
Our school is in oakland ca, across the bay from san francisco.



can't help much here! I'm out in Rhode Island. :)

Any suggestions for invited speakers and/or videos?


Although not really LEGO, my students liked seeing some of the online NASA videos about Spirit and Opportunity, the two Mars rovers. Having worked with the robots for several weeks, and seeing the real robots, really made them understand the accomplishment.




bb

--
Brian Blais
bblais@bryant.edu
http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais