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Three courses in robotics will be introduced next semester by the department of computer and information sciences, following the recent establishment of the Cognitive Agency and Robotic Lab.
Computer science professors Darush Davani and Goran Trajkovski are in charge of CAROL, located in the 7800 York Road building, and believe students will enjoy the hands-on environment.
"Students like [the lab] because it's not dry theory -- these are things you can touch and see and do," Trajkovski said.
Senior computer science major Daniel Stamate has been participating in undergraduate research with the lab.
"My role is to build the infrastructure and learn how everything works," he said.
Stamate described the classes as a great opportunity.
"[Students next semester] are going to be the pioneers of this new course," he said.
The new classes include an introductory course for honors students, a senior-level undergraduate course and a related graduate course.
The honors seminar, HONR 271, counts as a general education requirement for honors college students.
"Its focus is on getting [the students] to express their creativity using the Lego Mindstorms platform," Trajkovski said.
At the end of the course, teams will design a robot to compete in RoboBilliards.
"[Robotics] can really be introduced using these tiny little kits," Trajkovski said, describing a "nationwide movement" to introduce robotics at a basic level using tools like Mindstorms.
Davani and Trajkovski visited Brown, MIT, Carnegie Mellon and other universities to research other school's robotics programs and found the Mindstorms platform to be an effective teaching tool.
"We can do the very same things -- the same experiments, the same type of instruction, the same type of activities," he said.
Robotics will be studied in more depth in COSC 431, a senior-level undergraduate course. Some experiments will take place on robots built from scratch on the lab's brain stem platform.
The course will study mobile and autonomous robots. An autonomous robot is one that operates in complete autonomy from human command or intervention -- it can freely explore the environment and select appropriate actions to reach their goal.
According to the course syllabus, "autonomous mobile agents have emerged as one of the most important areas of research and development in information technology in the 1990s."
Topics to be covered include the mathematic basis of robots, control techniques, robotic capabilities, applications, and implications.
Several undergraduate students are conducting research projects using the lab. Stamate's project involves "victim acquisition" -- "a robot that will use sensors that can be inserted into a burning house...and would be able to detect victims," he said.
Stamate's partner, Gleb Gudzenko, is developing an infrastructure to enable "relevant and accurate tracing of the robots' activity" using GPS signals. Another project, by Albert Gary Williams, will allow users to virtually experiment with a mobile robot.
Pointing out the various projects underway, Trajkovski stressed that the study of robotics is interdisciplinary.
"Robotics can be applied in other major areas of interest," he said, explaining that studying robotics can teach students a wealth of skills that can be applied to other settings.
Stamate explained that knowledge from other fields is essential in understanding robotics. Related fields include biology, sociology, psychology, cognitive science, and physics.
"Once we know how people learn, we can model how computers learn," he said, pointing out that psychology looks at how people learn.
"And mathematics is a big need," he added.
"All the data that's going to come, we're going to have to interpret it and calculate it."
The robotics courses may eventually lead to a new major along the lines of computer engineering, Stamate said.
Trajkovski and Davani plan to propose several general education classes in different categories.
An introductory course for students not in the honors college is planned, as well as a junior level course titled "Cyberknetics and Cyber-ethics."
Trajkovski describes the lab as a "playground for adults," but points out that the research is important.
"On the other hand, though, they're doing serious stuff," Trajkovski said. "They're doing really great things."
Four teams of students are currently working on robotics-related projects as the lab infrastructure is set up and brought online.
The CAROL Web site includes a Web log with updates on the team's progress.
It can be read online at http://www.towson.edu/cosc/robotics/.
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