1. Player/Stage: A Unifying Paradigm to Improve Robotics Education Delivery
Monica Anderson, Laurence Thaete, Nathan Wiegand
The University of Alabama

2. Learning to program robots
Novice student issues
Long learning curve
Hardware access
“Murphy’s law”
Research student issues
Porting simulations to hardware
Different hardware programming paradigms

3. Opportunity Use simulation to teach concepts
Leverage layering to create a client API that is viable in both simulation and on actual hardware
Use lower cost platforms to increase accessibility
Cannot eliminate these problems completely but in the classroom, we can mitigate the effects of these issues by regulating when they appear.

4. Our Approach Provide abstraction and simulation via Player/Stage
Use multiple platforms with different strengths
Introduce concepts in a controlled manner

5. Player/Stage Robot control and simulation software [Gerkey01]
Open source (easily modified and extended)
Supports
iCreate roombas
Pioneers
Khepera
Others…

6. Player
Abstracts specific hardware into general control by interpreting client requests into hardware specific commands
Player interpreting
Roomba commands
Player interpreting
Koala commands
C,10,10
TCPIP (6665)
Client program
C++, Java, Python, etc
Player with Stage Simulator
Robot.move()

7. Stage/Gazebo Simulation component for algorithm testing
Clients ported to hardware with some “tweaking”

8. Research Platform K-Team Koala x86 500Mhz controller
Proximity sensor ring
High fidelity odometry
networking for off-board control and peer communications

9. Low-cost Education Platform
iRobot iCreate (roomba) - (approx $500)
Interfaced with Gumstix SBC
Lower fidelity odometry and sensors
networking for
off-board control and
communications

10. Logistics Player/Stage available on virtual Linux machine
Simulation assignments completed individually
Teams of three students on hardware assignments
Hardware included 5 Koala robots and 10 roomba robots

11. Curriculum
Introduce motor control and sensors iteratively in increasing detail over semester
Use simulation with and without error coefficients
Include self-paced hardware workshops during class time (Students are encouraged to help each other)
Move to hardware-based assignments at about 8 weeks

12. Student Projects Student designed projects to foster creativity
PenBot - robotic logo interpreter
Topological navigation
Life sized Pong “Man vs vision-based player”

13. Summary/Future Work Only 2 students dropped (18%) for personal reasons
Students reported more confidence with hardware after the class
Students created player clients for roombas (not included in lectures or class assignments)
More advanced class is being planned that incorporates higher level behaviors such as path planning and mapping

14. Questions