IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2016 - 44

curriculum. As stated previously, this curriculum should
be flexible and easily or quickly deployable and applicable to various robotics platforms and educational contexts. We feel that this is a set of guiding principles that is
important because it addresses some deficiencies in existing curricula. These principles are necessary to enable
principled study in a variety of learning environments.
The curriculum should:
● provide learning objectives and examples of learning
modules for various robotics concepts, without focusing
on a particular hardware or software platform
● present a comprehensive set of competencies based on
these concepts for effective robotics understanding
● promote a set of competencies for using robotics concepts
to teach or reinforce cocurricular concepts (i.e., programming, engineering design, art, math, physics, etc.)
● offer flexibility across academic level or robotics
experience.
Based on these principles, the following section provides a
set of theoretical concepts for a robotics curriculum.
Preliminary Concepts
This section presents a preliminary set of key theoretical
concepts that any person studying robotics should know.
These concepts demonstrate an application of
the guiding principles to
Robots are an ideal
a few key topics in robotics education. It should
artifact for teaching realbe noted that in this
world application of math, application, the breadth
and the depth of coverage for each of these conscience, programming,
cepts is influenced by the
learning context, e.g., the
and engineering.
students' academic and
robotics experience levels and the learning environment. For some of these concepts, there may also be some required prerequisite skills
based on the learning context. The proposed list of key
concepts provides one categorization for organizing lowerlevel concepts; however, as many concepts in robotics are
interconnected, there are several ways to organize them. A
more refined categorization should be developed through
future collaboration in the robotics community.
Key robotics concepts are (not in any particular order):
● robotics and society
● hardware
* components
* embodiment
* mechanical design
● sensors/perception
* distance/proximity
* tactile
● types of error
* sensors
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* thinking
* acting
planning/thinking/control schemes
* remote control
* autonomous control
* feedback control
* behavior-based control
* navigation
* localization
* mapping
acting
* actuators
* motors
* manipulators
* wheels
* gears
* kinematics
* forward
* inverse
programming algorithms-conditionals, loops, interrupts.

Robotics Curriculum Module Example
Motion Control
To demonstrate the application of the curricular criteria, it will be described in terms of a motion control
example. A student would benefit from knowledge of
motion control because it is a fundamental skill in robotics.
In general, motion control is how a user commands a robot
to perform certain motions or actions. For example, motion
control could be commanding a mobile robot to move forward, spin, pivot, or turn. Motion control could also be
commanding a manipulator joint to move to a given
angle or slide to a given distance. A set of recommended competencies for a module on motion control is listed here.
The student can
● demonstrate knowledge of motors, wheels, and odometry
error
● move a robot to a given pose (position and angle)
● move a robot to follow a path
● move a robot to avoid an obstacle.
Example objectives for secondary competencies based on
motion control are that students can
● use trigonometry to move the robot to a given pose
● apply physics concepts, such as d = rt, to move the robot to
a given pose
● program a sequence of robot motions
● demonstrate artistic expression with robot motion control.
Table 1 provides an example of how the high-level
motion control concept could be organized or adapted
to various academic or robotics experience levels. This
table indicates topics that may be taught to students and
is organized based on the robotics concept and the level
of prior robotics experience of the students. For example, for the Planning concept, a novice user would

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2016