EmbedIT Project

Robots have often been used as an educational tool in class to introduce kids to science and technology, disciplines that are affected by decreasing enrollments in universities. Consequently, many robotic kits are available off-the-shelf. Even though many of these platforms are easy to use, they focus on a classical top-down engineering approach. Additionally, they often require advanced programming skills. In this project we develop an open embedded systems kit for education (EmbedIT). Unlike common robot kits EmbedIT enables students to access the technical world in a non-engineering focused way. Through a graphical user interface students can easily build and control robots. We believe that once fascination and a basic understanding of technology has been established, the barrier to learn more advanced topics such as programming and electronics is lowered.

Target Audience

- Researchers in robotics and AI (as a rapid prototyping tool)

- Researchers in other disciplines (biology, psychology etc.)

- University students

- Teachers and their students in schools

- Artists

- More..

Assaf, D. & Pfeifer, R. (2011). Robotics as Part of an Informatics Degree Program for Teachers. In Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2011 (pp. 3128-3133). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Assaf D., Aryananda L., Pfeifer R. (2010): Robot Competition with Teachers. In Proceedings of SIMPAR 2010 Workshops. Intl. Conf. on SIMULATION, MODELING and PROGRAMMING for AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS Darmstadt (Germany), 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032863-3, pp. 514-521

FS 2011 AI seminar "Designing and Programming Embedded Systems for Robots"

FS 2009 AI seminar "Robots built from scratch"

HS 2008 "Bio-inspired Approached to Computation and Artificial Intelligence"

FS 2008 AI seminar "Robots: Theory and built from scratch"

HS 2007 "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence"

FS 2007 AI seminar "Robots: Theory and built from scratch"

WS 2006/2007 "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence"