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Physical Robots for Teaching Mobility & Manipulation using ROS in Remote Learning

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI) Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI)

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47844

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Paper Authors

biography

Maria Eugenia Cabrera University of Massachusetts, Lowell

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Maru Cabrera is an Assistant Professor in the Rich Miner School of Computer and Information Sciences at UMass Lowell. Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington working with Maya Cakmak in the Human-Centered Robotics Lab. She received her PhD from Purdue University advised by Juan P. Wachs. Her research interests aim to develop robotic systems that work alongside humans, collaborating in tasks performed in home environments.

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biography

John Raiti University of Washington

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Prof. John Raiti is an Associate Teaching Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, and is the Technical Programs Advisor at the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) where he teaches in the Interdisciplinary UW Master of Science in Technology Innovation degree program. He teaches UW graduate level courses in Sensors & Circuits, IoT and Connected Devices, Capstone-style Launch Projects, and Robotics (Mobility, Navigation, and Manipulation) with a focus on Human Robot Interaction (HRI).

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Abstract

Even though remote learning has been present and available in a myriad of topics before pandemic times, robotics remote learning had the limitation of interacting with robotic platforms through simulation alone. With COVID-19, postgraduate education was forced to move to remote learning. Birk et al. conducted a reasonable practice for online teaching of a robotics course at Jacobs University Bremen. Although their lectures covered most of the robotics areas, they used the pre-recorded videos to teach and did not hold labs to demonstrate the operations on real robots. The pivot created a paradigm shift for robotics courses traditionally taught in-person where students had the opportunity to experience interaction with robotic platforms in simulation and with the physical platforms. To address the learning challenges and with remote robotics, we present two case studies where physical robots were used to teach concepts in navigation and manipulation. This included instances of long-distance robotic teleoperation as well as autonomous behaviors. The Robot Operating System (ROS) plus Gazebo, and RViZ were used for teleoperation and autonomous routines with the Turtlebot3 and Kinova Gen3 lite robot platforms. Our results demonstrate how concepts in robots such as SLAM can be taught in both simulation and with physical robots plus how students learn how to mitigate the errors and uncertainty produced in the real world with both mobile and manipulator robots. Furthermore, the graduate-level courses were designed to be accessible to students from interdisciplinary backgrounds such as human-centered design engineering, architecture, and engineering. The benefit of this design is to enable students from interdisciplinary backgrounds to learn how to make both technical and design contributions to robotics projects that can lead to a more holistic, user-centered approach to robotics.

Cabrera, M. E., & Raiti, J. (2024, June), Physical Robots for Teaching Mobility & Manipulation using ROS in Remote Learning Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47844

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