Robots and Physical Computing

Social robotics has a research area in Universities for a while, looking into interface with robots that are based around our social cues, or modelling social cues to understand neurodiversity such as Autism. Some great work by companies such Aldebaran Robotics ( https://www.aldebaran.com/en ) with their Nao and Pepper robots have raised the profile of social robotics. People like Cynthia Breazeal leading on this: What I find most exciting is these robots are now they are coming into the home. OhBot At the entry level in terms of price, and very well featured, is the OhBot ( http://ohbot.weebly.com/ ). This is a  is a kit for a robot head with a Scratch-like interface having face-detection, some speech recognition in the current version; controlling several servos to get facial movement. It has provided hours of fun so far (see the video below). This is a great bit of kit for its price. Jibo Jibo has been developed by a company headed by Cynthia Breazeal. It...

I have want to write this for a while, a short series of blog posts on why I think this is in an incredible time to be interest in robots and physical computing. Three posts in the series: - Introduction - Small robots - Social robots It only takes a quick look on line to see a vibrant and growing network of people who are sharing and supporting each other to use physical computing to do imaginative things. They might go under different names PiJams, Makerspaces, etc but essentially it is about bring people with similar interests (and those are wide) in physical computing together. That is just, physically, but now adding a on-line community that also shares and supports each other you have something that is worth being involved in. If you are unsure  what I mean by this have a look at some of the following people's twitter timelines: @whaleygeek ( https://twitter.com/whaleygeek ) @ martinohanlon ( https://twitter.com/martinohanlon ) @simonmonk2 ( https://twitter.com/simo...

Sorry not programming this time, but this is a great little toy. An App-control robot from Sphero based on the Star Wars new Sphero BB-8 Droid . The video shows it in patrol mode, which in the case of my one is either rolling under the chair or rolling around the room. One of the other parts of the app include an augmented reality option where on the tablet it appears to be projecting messages and videos (included ones you create). It is difficult to resist playing with this one.

With a bit of time off, I had a chance to play with the Ohbot (see Previous related links below) a little more. My son and I played with trying to find could we get it to say hello if there is a face on camera but otherwise make it move randomly as if it was looking. We based the code on the examples codes that can be found at the OhBot website ( http://ohbot.weebly.com/ ). The video below shows it in action. Previous related posts OhBot Experiment OhBot a social robot All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.

When it is a Codebug - a board with 5x5 LED matrix and 4 connectors that can be either inputs or outputs.  Programming is through a Blockly interface (as above). Code can be tested using the simulator on the left, before downloading to the CodeBug. The site contains a excellent video showing all the steps (see  http://www.codebug.co.uk/gettingstarted/ ). Codebug, Experimenter Kit CODEBUG-EXPKIT at the moment is usually programmed on-line. There is though a Scratch version in development by  Cymplecy (SimpleSi) http://simplesi.net/scratchcodebug-beta-testing/  that is an potential option for off-line programming. It is currently at the Beta testing stage but is good fun to play with. What is nice about Codebug and, in fact, most of the Physical Computing device coming out that the moment is the developing community. There is a lot of sharing of projects, ideas and solutions to problems being provide to others through the site (and via Twitter) ...

A paper has recently been published in   International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education  on problem-solving and programming by two members of the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton. Problems First, Second and Third.  Gary Hill and Scott Turner DOI:   10.4018/ijqaete.2014070104 Abstract This paper considers the need to focus initial programming education on problem-solving, prior to the teaching of programming syntax and software design methodology. The main vehicle for this approach is simple Lego based robots programmed in Java, followed by the programming of a graphical representation/simulation to develop programming skills. Problem solving is not trivial (Beaumont & Fox, 2003) and is an important skill, central to computing and engineering. The paper extends the authors earlier research on problems first and problem solving (Hill & Turner, 2011) to furthe...

International partnership pays off for robotics expert Safaa Shwail, as he defends his PhD thesis : "Postgraduate student Safaa H Shwail, who studied at both the University of Babylon and University of Northampton, has recently defended his PhD thesis. His work investigated robot pathfinding - how to make robots move at the same time, going to different places, without crashing into each other" To read more go to:   http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/international-partnership-pays-off-for-robotics-expert-safaa-shwail-as-he-defends-his-phd-thesis 'via Blog this' If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with