COMPUTER SCIENTISTS LEARN ROBOTIC PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE DEVELOPED AT BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

Bob Roos of Allegheny College, Rebecca Bruce of UNC-Asheville, Jim Marshall of Pomona College and Myungsook Classen of California Lutheran University examine a robot.

Twenty-four computer scientists from around the country converged on Bryn Mawr last week for training in Pyro, a robotics programming code created by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Douglas Blank and developed by Associate Professor Deepak Kumar and Swarthmore computer scientist Lisa Meeden. Most of the participants in the workshop were college professors who hope to use Pyro, which is broadly applicable to many types of robots, to create teaching laboratories at their own schools. But a few of those present were investigating the language for practical applications, said Kumar.

The workshop was part of a program funded by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and administered by Blank, Kumar, Meeden and colleagues from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. The program's goal is to make advanced topics in robotics and cognitive science accessible to undergraduates by taking advantage of Pyro's ability to give instructions to many different kinds of sophisticated robots.

Blank, Kumar and their colleagues have developed a starter kit for college robotics laboratories, with a standard curriculum and documentation, and organizers keep in touch with workshop participants throughout the year to give advice and hear about classroom successes and problems. The Bryn Mawr Computer Science Program also hosts mailing lists and other online resources for users and developers of the open-source software at http://emergent.brynmawr.edu/index.cgi/Pyro. Blank maintains a page at http://PyroRobotics.org.

"The Pyro project is an example of our philosophy in teaching computer science here at Bryn Mawr," Blank said. "We try to make topics accessible to and inclusive of as many different people as possible. In this way, students — even those without previous programming experience — can immediately begin to interact with robots and the big questions in cognitive science, such as, 'What is intelligence?'

"The workshop was designed so that educators who may not have backgrounds in robotics can use robots in the classroom in an easy and pedagogically stimulating way," said Blank.

"About 40 people from around the United States have been trained in Pyro at these workshops," Kumar reported, "and the program has really exceeded our expectations. For instance, we were initially planning for 15 or 16 participants in this workshop, but we ended up with 24 — and Conferences and Events did a great job hosting them. Several people discovered Pyro online and began using it without ever participating in the workshops. And Jim Marshall, a professor from Pomona College, spent his sabbatical here at Bryn Mawr working on Pyro. He and a professor from Harvey Mudd College have gotten a grant to develop Pyro for another robot and make it compatible with Windows."

"The workshop was very rewarding for us, and we hope it was useful to the teachers," Blank observed. "It is quite a feeling to stand back and see people using something that you have created. I felt great that they were getting something out of our programs and curricular materials, but also a little scared. What happens if something doesn't work right? Luckily, everything went as planned."

According to Kumar, participants in this year's workshop included an engineer who hopes to use Pyro to develop robotic aids for service dogs, as well as a representative of a company that sells educational robots.

The organizers of the workshop hope to host at least two more of the events. The group is also excited about an upcoming presentation on Pyro this winter at the conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, a group that includes researchers at NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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