Project Description. 1 Vision, Goals, Objectives, and Outcomes. 1.1 Introduction

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1 Project Description 1 Vision, Goals, Objectives, and Outcomes 1.1 Introduction Undergraduate interest in traditional Computer Science has fallen to alarmingly low levels, ironically at a time when computing competencies and skills are of critical importance to the Nation; and, at a time when more young people than ever before substantially interact with the products of software engineering on a daily basis in every endeavor. A promising approach to revitalizing undergraduate computing education is to engage students in areas of interest to them that incorporate computing as a key discipline. But one must find interesting, challenging and enjoyable activities in which the veil of embedded computing is removed and the software itself is exposed for interaction. Robotics is one such area. Robotics the combination of sensing, computation and actuation in the real world has long captured the interest of the American public. Today, the field is on the verge of rapid growth, as the androids of yesterday s science fiction give way to practical, useful, and affordable devices in defense and security, consumer products, transportation, and medicine. To meet the anticipated workforce needs of the robotics industry, Worcester Polytechnic Institute has established a multidisciplinary undergraduate program, offering a B.S. degree in Robotics Engineering, which combines core concepts from Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering to educate students to participate and lead in the Robotics Revolution. Just as the PC Revolution and the Internet Revolution attracted students to computing and related engineering fields, leading to the creation of new enterprises, industries, and economic vitality, the Robotics Revolution has the potential to do the same. As with the earlier revolutions, the Robotics Revolution will be driven by individuals with the right combination of creativity to imagine new applications, the technical knowledge to construct them, and the entrepreneurial spirit to transform their creations into viable businesses. Therefore, we propose to engage young men and women in Robotics by building a university-based community of entrepreneurial robotics students nationwide through a Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference. That robotics has arrived for real can hardly be in doubt. The Roomba vacuum cleaner is rapidly becoming a standard household item, autonomous/remotely controlled airplanes go after bad guys in some of the most remote and inaccessible corners of the world, teams competing in the DARPA Challenge have proven that autonomous navigation is feasible for land-based vehicles, and robotics competitions attract high school students as only a rock concert or a major sports event could a few years ago. The next big thing! says Bill Gates [1]. The increase in power and decrease in price of sensors, computers and actuators the vital organs of a robot have ushered in an era where building autonomous or semi-autonomous technological marvels of unprecedented complexity and capabilities is starting to look routine. The impact of the information revolution has empowered individuals to not only find information about nearly anything, essentially immediately, but has also enabled individuals to 1

2 create books, movies, music, and other artwork of diverse types. Similarly, the robotics revolution will allow us to acquire or build robots that accomplish physical tasks, such as creating complex artifacts and conducting precise or hazardous actions, which today are beyond the means or methods of most individuals. Yet and in spite of existing applications and immensely powerful implications listed above successful applications of off-the-shelf robotics seem surprisingly meager! With a few notable exceptions robots are not everywhere. This dearth has been due, in large part, to the lack of physically and computationally capable component systems. This is about to change. We have probably reached the point where in many cases the biggest challenge is not building a robotics device but to imagine new things that robots can do. This is not meant to imply that technical challenges do not exist, but rather that our ability to solve technical challenges has outpaced our ability to imagine what new tasks robots can do for us. Thus as emphasized by Gates, for example we are in many ways at a point where the personal computer industry was in the mid and late seventies when the hardware had reached the performance/cost threshold needed for the industry to take off. As with the computer revolution, the robotics revolution will be driven by individuals with the right combination of technical knowledge to construct them, creativity to imagine new applications, and the entrepreneurial spirit to transform their creations into viable businesses. Meeting the first of these challenges, helping students achieve the necessary mix of technical knowledge, is complicated by the fact that robotics is inherently an interdisciplinary field. To build a robot, an individual or a team must master topics traditionally taught in computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. The proposed work leverages on a recently introduced program leading to a B.S. degree in Robotics Engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). This is, as far as we know, the first such program in the United States. The program has already been approved by the faculty and the executive committee of the WPI Board of Trustees, and we are admitting students in Spring 2007 for Fall The second challenge is the main motivation for the community building effort proposed here. We believe that the economic benefit of smart electromechanical systems will be reaped by those individuals and nations that can convert the technological know-how into products. To do so, technological proficiency is necessary, but not sufficient. The added ingredient is the presence of individuals with the creativity to imagine new products and the desire to see the products to market. This second challenge is the target of the activities described in this proposal. This CPATH-CB proposal seeks support to build an intercollegiate and multi-disciplinary community of faculty promoting the education of robotics engineering students through engagement in a Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference. The proposed task involves several community building phases featuring workshops that will architect the competition, prepare the resource materials, provide a forum for participating university faculty and students and conclude with the first regional competition and conference. The Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference will challenge students to design and build robots to perform useful and novel tasks through a university-level competition. Entrants will be judged primarily on the extent to which they meet existing needs or create new markets, 2

3 and secondarily with respect to design and analysis, implementation skill, and business plans. While robotics competitions exist at the K 12 and university levels, these are notably based on games with a fixed set of rules. Existing games do not sufficiently challenge the entrepreneurial student; what is needed is a competition that emphasizes the engineering of solutions to openended real-world problems and that invites creativity by an open competition based on the intellectual and commercial and/or humane aspects of the solutions. The competition will be coupled with a student-centered conference at which all participants will have opportunities to present and publish their innovative ideas. Undergraduate and Graduate students from all CISE disciplines will participate in the competition as well as in the preparatory workshops and conference. We believe that a focus on robotics engineering and the development of a community of educators dedicated to the development and promotion of this field are important elements of an overall strategy for the transformation and revitalization of undergraduate and graduate computing education. This transformation, which will cut across all CISE disciplines, will ultimately affect undergraduate and graduate education, re-awakening America s students to the opportunities and personal satisfaction of careers in engineering and science. In the following, we detail our reasoning and the role of our proposal in realizing this transformation change. 1.2 Why specifically robotics engineering? The decisions to create a new major in robotics engineering at WPI and to propose the Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference in this proposal are the results of intense discussion among a group of multi-disciplinary faculty who believe strongly that robotics is just about to change our lives and can also catapult a transformational change in CISE educational practice. The group sought input from a wide range of other individuals, both in industry and academe, before deciding to develop WPI s new Robotics Engineering major. The main reasons for this first effort, which apply equally well to the current proposal, are summarized below: Interdisciplinary: It seems obvious that designing devices that marry sensing, computing, and acting requires individuals who have a background in electrical engineering, computer science, and mechanical engineering. Such individuals are rare and not every topic usually taught in these disciplines is as important as others for the design of robots. Furthermore, design of robots requires emphasis on system integration that goes beyond that usually included in an undergraduate study in the traditional disciplines. Attracting students: Robotics is something that everyone can relate to. It is well understood to involve a broad range of automatic and autonomous devices (industrial robots, mobile robots, and vacuum cleaners, for example) and robotics resonates strongly with a generation brought up with computers and the Internet. Robotics competitions have proven to be THE way to generate excitement about science and technology among high school students. Thus, robotics is an important tool for attracting more (and more diverse) students into CISE disciplines. This point will be supported and further elaborated on below. New economic opportunities: The drop in prices of the various components needed to build robots has the potential to generate a robotics boom where independent innovators flood the 3

4 market with new gadgets. Unlike biomedical products, for example which usually require significant initial investment, robotics is a natural domain of innovative small businesses. The economic opportunities should be enormous and robotics engineering programs need to be designed to foster an innovative entrepreneurial spirit among the students. Interest in robotics among elementary and secondary school students is, by all accounts, significant nationwide (Fig. 1). As indicators of the level of interest, we cite the following statistics: In 2006, over 28,000 high-school students competed in the FIRST Robotic Competition and another 6,000 mostly high school students competed in the FIRST Vex Challenge [2]. Figure 1. Robotics generates enormous excitement FIRST Robotic Competition among students of all ages. WPI is an active expects to reach over 30,000 highschool aged students in 2007 [3] participant in and host for several robotics competitions each year. University faculty and and FIRST Vex Challenge expects staff visit a large number of schools (50-60 per over 25,000 students within a few year) at all levels. This picture shows enthusiastic years [4]. participants at one such demonstration. Botball robotic soccer competitions have included over 34,000 students to date [5]. BattleBots IQ (numbers unknown) has been going on since 2000, claiming to have "hundreds" of high schools involved [6]. Other events, such as Robocup and Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) Robotics with 8,000 students yearly [7], also illustrate the high level of interest. The robots.net Robotics Competition page lists 88 competitions in 2006 alone [8]. Note that FIRST counts as a single entry, despite its multiple dates and venues. The potential of a robotics competition format to have a broader impact with respect to increasing the interest and diversity of students enrolling for CISE degree programs is well demonstrated in the results of the study More than Robots: An Evaluation of the FIRST Robotics Competition Participant and Institutional Impacts prepared by the Center for Youth and Communities Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, in 2005 [9]. This study is based on New York City and Detroit participants in the FIRST program over a four year period, for which 55% of the respondents were non-white; 41% were female; and 37% came from families where neither parent had attended college. The large majority of FIRST alumni graduated high school and went to college at a higher rate (89%) than high school graduates nationally (65%). Particularly notable was that 77% percent of female participants were in college, 68% of African-American alumni, and 78% of Hispanic alumni all above the national averages for those groups. Women and minority participants majored in Engineering at 4

5 high rates: 33% of the female, 27% of the African-American, and 47% of the Hispanic students compared to national averages of 2%, 5% and 6% respectively. 1.3 Robotics Engineering at WPI The Robotics Engineering Program at WPI is a new undergraduate degree program that will educate young engineers for the robotics industry and prepare students for graduate work in robotics. Although Robotics Engineering is not recognized as a distinct engineering field by ABET, we have planned the program as if it were accreditable. In addition, the program includes an entrepreneurship component to prepare future enterprising engineers [10]. The benefits of the program to engineering education are significant. The program will: Educate young engineers for the robotics industry and prepare students for graduate work in robotics, Leverage FIRST, BattleCry, and other robotics competitions to capture the imagination of secondary school students and their parents to draw a diverse student body to the field of engineering, Contribute to the growth of the robotics industry, Attract outstanding faculty to this new and growing field, and Stimulate research in robotics. We anticipate that other universities will model new robotics programs on our example. The program objectives have been selected to produce a program that is not only attractive for its technical strength, but also seeks to prepare individuals for leadership roles in the industry. Thus, the program objectives are to educate men and women to Have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Systems Engineering. Apply these abstract concepts and practical skills to design and construct robots and robotic systems for diverse applications. Have the imagination to see how robotics can be used to improve society and the entrepreneurial background and spirit to make their ideas become reality. Demonstrate the ethical behavior and standards expected of responsible professionals functioning in a diverse society. The program is built on a solid foundation of mathematics and science. Mathematics includes more breadth, including Discrete Mathematics, Probability/Statistics, and Integral and Differential Calculus, and Differential Equations, than is typically found in undergraduate engineering programs. The core of the Robotics Engineering program is captured in a fivecourse Unified Robotics Engineering course sequence. The sequence integrates material from CS, ECE, and ME, covering sensing, decision-making and computation, and manipulation, motion, and navigation. Other courses are required from each of the participating department to ensure technical breadth and strength. Courses in entrepreneurship and the social implications of technology are also required. 1.4 Goals of the Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference Proposal The identification of inventing new things for robots to do as the next logical step in the 5

6 development of robotics calls for actions to accelerate the process by inspiring more of our students to think about new applications. The new Robotics Engineering major at WPI provides the technical skills needed to build a wide variety of robots. However, not everybody wants a degree in Robotics Engineering; hence it is important to provide a forum that attracts broad participation. The successful robotics innovation and invention team almost certainly will comprise a multidisciplinary group of engineering and computer science students spanning the CISE disciplines, with representation from both the undergraduate and graduate programs. Therefore, we plan to build a community focused on the fusion of CISE disciplines in the context of a single topic, robotics. The proposed suite of activities, drawing on the WPI Robotics Engineering major, will be a testing ground and springboard for the dissemination of this combined vision and approach to fundamentally transform CISE related education in universities. The ultimate goals include not just a fundamental change in the packaging and delivery of multidisciplinary education, but also the creation of a pipeline from a pool of students with a demonstrably intense pre-college interest into a vocation that meets important national and economic needs. Robotics will change the way we live. Leading the change requires people with the vision and the imagination to see new applications and the technical skills to make the vision become a reality. Seeding the transformation of education so that young men and women will take advantage of the enormous opportunities brought about by the fusion of sensors, computers, and actuators is the purpose and broadest goal of the present proposal. 1.5 Objectives The objectives of the proposed work are linked to the specific community building activities that we will undertake: Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference Planning Workshop Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference Pre-competition Workshop Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference (RICC) The RICC Planning Workshop will gather representatives from a core group of Northeast region universities. The workshop objectives are to disseminate our vision, establish ground rules for the competition, create a detailed schedule, and seek assistance from this new community to create the first regional RICC to take place two years from that meeting. The RICC Pre-competition Workshop will bring example student projects and teams together with an expanded group of regional participants. This objectives of this workshop are to disseminate resources and best practices by core group members with the intent of improving the activities in all the programs and to encourage new institutions to join the community. The RICC activity will be a two-day event during which entries will be on display and presentations will be given. Judges from industry will evaluate the entries and award several prizes in categories, such as innovation, quality of design, market studies, and others. Other conference activities will include presentations by faculty regarding classroom and project 6

7 curricula, assessments, and practices. Educational sessions for students will include topics related to the commercialization of products and entrepreneurship. The objective of the RICC is to reward all participants for their hard work, expose the best ideas to industry representatives, give students useful feedback on their inventions, and foster teamwork within each group, collegiality across teams, serve as a milestone in participants education, and increase public support for science and engineering generally. 1.6 Outcomes The proposed effort to transform CISE education offers the immediate outcome of accelerating the development of an innovative workforce, a workforce that is focused on imagining new things for robots to do. This outcome is a direct result of the objective of creating a yearly competition and conference, with the thrust inventing new things for robots to do in which college students present their own inventions. The creation of a community of regional universities that will participate in and host this yearly event is the other core outcome of this project. The impact of this outcome is significant as it provides a forum in the form of workshops for this intercollegiate and multi-disciplinary group to disseminate their best practices towards the goal of CPATH-related transformation of education. The desired outcomes of the Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference are two-fold: Stimulate the student s imagination to think about new robotics applications and encouragement to develop their ideas into working prototypes, and Bring the students work to the attention of people in industry who may see opportunities to further develop the students ideas and to provide a forum where the students can communicate with industry representatives to learn about needs and new problems. 2 Implementation Plan 2.1 Overall Project Plan The overarching task in this effort is the creation of an annual Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference event and its supporting workshops and materials. Because of its intercollegiate participation and the need for industry participation, an immediate task is the creation of a multidisciplinary community that pilots and supports this endeavor. Below we describe the current vision for the structure and timing of the competition, conference, and their supporting elements. Subsequently we provide a schedule for the formation of the educational community that will comprise educators and industrial representatives from all CISE disciplines and many institutions in the Northeast region. 2.2 Proposed Structure for the Competition and Conference Since the goals of the proposed competition, conference, and community building effort are significantly broader than those of existing competitions, aimed at the multidisciplinary aspects 7

8 of robotics and connecting to the future growth of this field, the structure of the competition is also quite different. To create a broad community of innovators in robotics and to help stimulate the development of new product lines and new companies, students must be engaged in openended projects. This contrasts significantly with the usual competition structures in which a well-defined task or game must be executed and solutions are restricted by a given set of components or performance limits. The set outcomes and fixed kit of parts are a result of efforts in these cases to level the playing field. The RICC will have no specified tasks and no box of parts We want students to identify opportunities for robotics, generate out-of-the-box ideas, and invent creative solutions. Since innovative solutions to real-world problems are the focus, the projects will not be judged on sheer technical cleverness, or artful but unapplied creativity. Rather the utility of the invention and its value proposition will be the target and overall criteria for success. Judges from industry will evaluate the entries and we anticipate awarding several prizes, based on criteria still to be fully developed. We expect to award prizes for several accomplishments including innovation, quality of design, market studies, and in several categories, such as undergraduate graduate teams mixed undergraduate and graduate teams intercollegiate teams As the event grows in popularity, we foresee adding recognitions in various additional subcategories. In addition to the students presenting actual (working) prototypes, during the conference segment we plan to have one or more blue sky sessions where we accept speculative proposals for new devices and applications that are presented by poster only. These proposals will be clearly identified as speculative will but serve to stimulate discussions and the imagination of the participants. The initial design of the competition will be developed in part by what appears to work in competitions with which WPI faculty have experience, such as FIRST and the FSAE car race. We do emphasize, however, that we expect the present event to be very different. To define the RICC, create a community of university educators, promote the activity, support its implementation at the participating schools and conduct the event, three phases are planned: Planning Meeting/Workshop, Pre-Competition Kick-off Meeting, and Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference. The schedule of events in the next section details the efforts within and supporting these events. We foresee the competition and conference being a two-day event, on the WPI campus (at least 8

9 initially), kicking off on a Friday night and wrapping up on Sunday morning. The entries will be on display the entire time, but on Saturday there will also be presentations. The proceedings, consisting on short abstracts, copies of posters, and slides, will be published on the web following the conference. During the Pre-competition kick-off, the organizers will offer several workshops on some of the technical aspects of robotics, such as programming and sensors. At the first RICC conference we plan to offer invited talks on various aspects such as protecting (patenting) and promoting new ideas, seeking venture capital and identification of significant commercial opportunities. To encourage participation by faculty from many universities in the region, we are dedicated a significant portion of our proposed funding for the purpose of travel subsidies. These funds will be awarded to offset air-travel, room and board expenses for workshop participants by application. 2.3 Schedule of events We propose to schedule the Robotics Innovation Competition and Conference on a calendar year cycle to minimize overlap with the FIRST Robotics competition. Each competition and conference cycle will begin the summer before the RICC with a Planning Meeting to establish the ground rules and frameworks for the following year. The competition will start in the spring of each year with the formal announcement, registration, and kick-off meeting. The competition itself will be held in late fall, but not so late so as to interfere with final examinations or other end-of-school-year activities. This timing is intended to capture the attention of college juniors who are seeking topics for senior thesis and capstone project experiences. The competition itself falls near the end of the senior year, providing most of the school year for development of the entry while allowing the competition participation to take place before seniors graduate, and, one expects, to enter the job market or graduate school. Note that the conference timing will allow participants to cite their published conference papers on applications for graduate admissions, which will only increase their chances for further education. Our tentative schedule, with specific tasks identified, follows: Fall 2007 o Planning Meeting/Workshop Pre-Preparation Lay groundwork for Summer 2008 Planning Meeting Select Summer Planning Meeting venue and reserve accommodations Develop participant list Spring 2008 o Planning Meeting/Workshop Preparation Revise/expand participant list Prepare Meeting Agenda Review and confirm Planning Meeting outcomes Draft competition rules 9

10 Develop meeting materials o Planning Meeting/Workshop Announcement Send messages and follow-up to participant list Register participants Summer 2008 o Planning Meeting/Workshop for 2009 Competition and Conference Identify potential sponsors Identify competition judges Identify potential competition and conference participants Select venue Decide on competition rules Decide on competition awards Web site planning Arrange for competition and conference publicity Plan Competition Kick-off Meeting Fall 2008 o Competition and Conference Pre-Announcement Contact potential competition and conference participants Collect expressions of interest with discounted registration fee for early registrants Launch competition and conference web site Spring 2009 o Competition and Conference Announcement Send messages and follow-up to potential participant list Prepare registration materials Update web site o Competition and Conference Registration Register participants Update web site o Pre-Competition Kick-off Meeting Summer 2009 o Formative Participant Assessment Survey participants Collate and analyze participant responses o Planning Meeting/Workshop for 2010 Competition and Conference Identify additional potential sponsors Review and revise competition judges Identify additional potential competition and conference participants Select venue Review and revise competition rules 10

11 Review and revise competition awards Update web site Arrange for competition and conference publicity Review and revise plans for Pre-Competition Kick-off Meeting Develop summative assessment materials Fall 2009 o 1 st Robotics Innovation Competition and Conference Conduct and participate in competition Conduct and participate in conference o Summative Participant Assessment Survey participants Collate and analyze participant responses Thereafter o Continue on cycle of Spring: Competition opens, Summer: Planning for next year, Fall: Competition and Conference. 3 Project team The proposed project will be lead by the same team of people that were responsible for the creation of the Robotics Engineering Program. A short description of the team follows. Prof. Michael A. Gennert is Department Head of the Computer Science Department and Acting Director of the Robotics Engineering Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has worked at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Worcester, MA, the University of California, Riverside, General Electric Ordnance Systems, Pittsfield, MA and PAR Technology Corporation, New Hartford, NY. He received the S.B. in Computer Science, S.B. in Electrical Engineering, and S.M. in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and the Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1987 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Gennert is interested in Computer Vision, Image Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Databases, and Programming Languages, with ongoing projects in biomedical image processing, stereo and motion vision, very large spatio-temporal databases, and programming language semantics. He is author or co-author of over 80 papers. Prof. Gretar Tryggvason has been the head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering for over six years. His publications on computational studies of multiphase flows are widely cited and his numerical methods (and codes, in many cases) have been used by a number of research groups around the world. He has served as a Principal Investigator on grants and contracts totaling several million dollars, funded by various federal agencies, including NASA, NSF, ONR, AFOSR, and DARPA. He also has a longstanding interest in engineering education. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow, and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computational Physics. 11

12 Prof. David Cyganski is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at WPI where he has previously held the positions of Vice President of Information Systems and Vice Provost. He is an active and widely cited researcher in the areas of radar, precise wireless location, automatic target recognition, image and sensor data analysis, and high speed network communication technologies. He has been the recipient of more than 50 research grants totaling seven million dollars funded by DARPA, ARO, NSF, DOJ, and the electronics, aerospace and medical industry. Previously he was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories. He is a past recipient of the WPI Trustees' Award for Outstanding Creative Scholarship, the WPI Trustees' Outstanding Teaching Award, and he is a coauthor of the book Information Technology: Inside and Outside. In addition to the senior members of the team, we plan to hire a full time research associate to help with the planning of the RICC, including the planning events, and to be a constantly available resource for the RICC participants. We expect to hire a recently graduated WPI student, ideally someone who has been involved in robotics activities during his/her undergraduate studies. The research associate will be employed for the second half of the first year of the project and fully for the two follow-on years, including for the first full RICC. Over 20 other members of the WPI faculty are associated with the Robotics Engineering Program and can be counted on as resources for the proposed work. Several prominent industry leaders have already agreed to serve on the Advisory Board for the Robotics Engineering program. Although the Board has been set up to provide advice with the administration of the Robotic Engineering Program, we also expect to consult with the board for the work proposed here. The Board currently has the following members: Brian Abraham, President, Bluefin Robotics. John Catrone, Director, Systems Engineering Center, Raytheon Company. Michael D. Gerstenberger, Senior Engineer, Kuka Robotics. Ed Godere, Vice President and Group Director, Robotics Division, Foster-Miller, Inc. Helen Greiner, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, irobot Corp. Brian Hart, President, Black-I Robotics. Dean Kamen, Founder and President, DEKA Research and Development Corp. Dan Kara, President, RoboticsTrends. Scott D. Myers, President, General Dynamics Robotics Systems. Aaron J. Penkacik, Vice President and CTO, Advanced Systems and Technology, BAE. N. Douglas Powers 71, Vice President and CIO, Allegro MicroSystems. 4 Future Work The current proposal is a step along the path to revitalize computing education. While some students will continue to focus on traditional computer science and software engineering, increasing numbers will embed computing in application domains. We have seen this occur in Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics, Digital Media and related programs, Computational Sciences such as Computational Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and in Computational Engineering programs. Robotic is the next step in this evolution. 12

13 The WPI Robotics Engineering faculty has identified four immediate objectives for future implementation as part of an overall strategy for the revitalization of computing education of which current proposal is one element. Further develop the undergraduate Robotics Engineering curriculum, including the Unified Robotics course sequence, Introduce a Robotics Systems Engineering Design course that combines course / project work in support of the Robotic Innovation Competition and Conference, Develop additional upper-level undergraduate courses in Robotics, and Seek accreditation for Robotics Engineering. Note that each objective has broad applicability and benefits Robotics programs generally, not only at WPI and not only complete major programs. However, we anticipate that other universities will introduce undergraduate Robotics programs and that WPI s program may serve as a useful model. For example, Carnegie-Mellon has been reported to be considering such a program [11]. These objectives are currently at various stages of planning or development. The following expands upon each objective and its current implementation status. Develop the Undergraduate Curriculum: We propose to develop a hyper-textual, livemath, multimedia and transportable Robotics curriculum. The courses are being developed to emphasize fundamental knowledge and technical development in the specific context of robotics and will emphasize a systems approach. Following sound pedagogical principles, the curriculum will engage students in the design and construction of robots from the beginning of their studies, starting with relatively elementary machines and progressively increasing in sophistication. Moreover, by having students contribute to a powerful engineering-oriented knowledge repository, they will become partners with the faculty in the innovative construction of a living textbook a mathematical, modeling, simulation and visualization Wiki as a collaboratory [12] base for a unified robotics curriculum. A proposal entitled IISCD: Robotics Curriculum Collaboratory [13] has already been submitted to the NSF IISCD program and a separate submission to the NSF CCLI program is planned. Robotics Systems Engineering Design course: The Robotics Innovation Competition and Conference can serve as a capstone learning experience for undergraduate Robotics Engineering majors and other students with a minor, concentration, or focus in Robotics. However, one cannot expect students to obtain the most benefit from the competition without adequate preparation. A pre-capstone course can ensure that participants can get the most from the competition, providing the background needed for teamwork, entrepreneurship, systems analysis, and project management. The course should be project-based, with lab and homework exercises aimed at preparing students for the inclass project assignment that occupies the greater part of the course. We offer the following as a potential course description: ROBOTICS SYSTEMS ENGINEERING DESIGN. The goal of this course is to provide experience with the design of a robotic system, component, or process. Basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering 13

14 sciences are applied to convert resources to meet a stated objective. Fundamental steps of the design process are practiced, including the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, manufacturability, testing, and evaluation. Students work in small teams and are encouraged to use creativity to solve specific but open-ended problems, and then present their results. Unified Robotics I-IV is strongly recommended for all students as a preparation for the design element of their capstone project. It is anticipated that this course will be of most benefit to students when taken in their junior year well in advance of their capstone project Develop additional courses: The new WPI B.S. degree in Robotics Engineering brought with it five new Unified Robotics undergraduate courses that take a unique interdisciplinary approach to engineering/computing education. As the Robotics Engineering program matures, we plan to add courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In contrast to the traditional division of material into vision and manipulation, we may decide to organize the material around application areas, covering both sensing and actuation in each course. For example, a course in Biomedical Robotics would focus on robotics for surgical applications, prostheses, or health care robots. Such a course would be well placed to include ethical and regulatory issues in addition to technical material. Similar courses may be developed for Consumer Robotics to include manufacturability, marketing, and sales issues, Defense Robotics to include navigation, ethics, and doctrine, and Educational Robotics to include pedagogical issues. Seek Accreditation: Robotics Engineering is not recognized by ABET as a distinct engineering discipline; hence there are no program-specific criteria to follow for accreditation. Nonetheless, we have planned our program as if it were accreditable, based on program objectives and outcomes, and with mathematics, science, and engineering and design components consistent with general criteria for accreditation [14]. Such a program is potentially accreditable under General Engineering, which has no program-specific criteria, and we expect to apply for accreditation eventually. Note that program criteria for Mechatronics Engineering are currently under consideration by ABET. These criteria refer to required chemistry and materials components, which we have not included in our program. Hence, despite the similarities between Mechatronics and Robotics, accreditation using Mechatronics Engineering criteria appears infeasible. 5 Conclusion Unlike the information revolution, which may have been hard to predict, the robotics revolution is not. The marriage of mechanical devices, including actuators of various sorts, with sensors and computers is already changing the way we live. Yet, Robotics is still in its infancy and it is probably not an understatement that we haven t seen anything yet. While Robotic arms and smart vacuum cleaners are already familiar, the possibilities for intelligent manufacturing, autonomous transport systems, military technology, and household appliances in the widest possible sense, are limitless. We may not know exactly what kind of autonomous personal transportation systems or household assistances we will have two, three, or four decades from now, but we will have such devices and many, many more. Engineers who have the vision 14

15 and the skills to take advantage of these new possibilities are essential for the economic health of the U.S. and we are determined to contribute to their education. Here, we propose to build a community focused on the fusion of CISE disciplines in the context of a single topic, robotics. We will hold an annual Robotics Innovations Competition and Conference that will be provide an impetus for students to develop new things for robots to do and provide a channel for communication between students and industry. The Competition and Conference will also serve as testing ground for new ideas of how to fundamentally transform CISE-related education in universities. The ultimate goals include not just a fundamental change in the packaging and delivery of multidisciplinary education, but also the creation of a pipeline from a pool of students with a demonstrably intense pre-college interest into a vocation that meets important national and economic needs. 15