Myro-C++: An Open Source C++ Library for CS Education Using AI

In this paper we present Myro-C++, developed at the University of Tennessee. Myro-C++ is a C++ port ofthe Python Myro library that was written by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) at Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College. Myro-C++ is publicly available, open source software, released under the GPLv3 open source license. At the time of writing, the library has been used six semesters for the CS1 courseat the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The library contains functions for control of the robot and access to sensor information, and provides the ability to display the live camera image from the robot into a video window. This library is used as a teaching tool in our CS1 course where students learn basic programming fundamentals using multiple artificial intelligence based labs. In addition to the software, the IPRE book, Learning Computing with Robots, has been edited to use C++ examples and explanations, and is freely available. We also present example programs that we use as laboratory assignments in our Introduction to Computer Science course, which are also freely available.