IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2016 - 67
BACKGROUND IMAGE LICENSED BY GRAPHIC STOCK
Teaching Introductory
Robotics Programming
Learning to Program with National Instruments' LabVIEW
By Timothy Bower
T
his article considers strategies for teaching
beginning students how to program mobile robots
for autonomous operation. Many high school and
beginning undergraduate students desire to learn
about robotics, but they may lack the required
knowledge. Experiences from an undergraduate course are
described to illustrate the robot, its programming
environment, software design, and algorithms, which faculty
can use to guide beginning students from a place of no prior
experience to writing impressive, autonomous mobile-robot
programs. Autonomous algorithms that perform well and are
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2016.2533002
Date of publication: 12 May 2016
1070-9932/16©2016IEEE
appropriate for beginning students, including a new
wall-following algorithm, are reviewed.
Robotics has become quite popular in education. As the
potential for applying robotics to meet real needs expands
with the maturation of the technology, so too has interest
in learning about robotics. Students of all ages and educational levels want to learn how to build and program
robots. The cross-discipline nature of robotics makes it
ideal for youths to explore career possibilities in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Affordable hardware options abound for the beginning
student wishing to build a simple robot. Sufficient documentation for learning to write a program for the manual
operation of robots is also available. Thus, a lack of prior
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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE
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