Student engagement is one of the key challenges in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) education. Tangible learning approaches, such as educational robots, provide an effective way to enhance engagement and learning by offering real-world applications to bridge the gap between theory and practice. However, existing platforms often face barriers such as high cost or limited capabilities. In this paper, we present Curio, a cost-effective, smartphone-integrated robotics platform designed to lower the entry barrier to robotics and AI education. With a retail price below $50, Curio is more affordable than similar platforms. By leveraging smartphones, Curio eliminates the need for onboard processing units, dedicated cameras, and additional sensors while maintaining the ability to perform AI-based tasks. To evaluate the impact of Curio on student engagement, we conducted a case study with 20 participants, where we examined usability, engagement, and potential for integrating into AI and robotics education. The results indicate high engagement and motivation levels across all participants. Additionally, 95% of participants reported an improvement in their understanding of robotics. Findings suggest that using a robotic system such as Curio can enhance engagement and hands-on learning in robotics and AI education. All resources and projects with Curio are available at trycurio.com.

Our ongoing development and deployment of an online robotics education platform highlighted a gap in providing an interactive, feedback-rich learning environment essential for mastering programming concepts in robotics, which they were not getting with the traditional code-simulate-turn in workflow. Since teaching resources are limited, students would benefit from feedback in real-time to find and fix their mistakes in the programming assignments. To address these concerns, this paper will focus on creating a system for unit testing while integrating it into the course workflow. We facilitate this real-time feedback by including unit testing in the design of programming assignments so students can understand and fix their errors on their own and without the prior help of instructors/TAs serving as a bottleneck. In line with the framework's personalized student-centered approach, this method makes it easier for students to revise, and debug their programming work, encouraging hands-on learning. The course workflow updated to include unit tests will strengthen the learning environment and make it more interactive so that students can learn how to program robots in a self-guided fashion.

This paper presents a work-in-progress on a learn-ing system that will provide robotics students with a personalized learning environment. This addresses both the scarcity of skilled robotics instructors, particularly in community colleges and the expensive demand for training equipment. The study of robotics at the college level represents a wide range of interests, experiences, and aims. This project works to provide students the flexibility to adapt their learning to their own goals and prior experience. We are developing a system to enable robotics instruction through a web-based interface that is compatible with less expensive hardware. Therefore, the free distribution of teaching materials will empower educators. This project has the potential to increase the number of robotics courses offered at both two- and four-year schools and universities. The course materials are being designed with small units and a hierarchical dependency tree in mind; students will be able to customize their course of study based on the robotics skills they have already mastered. We present an evaluation of a five module mini-course in robotics. Students indicated that they had a positive experience with the online content. They also scored the experience highly on relatedness, mastery, and autonomy perspectives, demonstrating strong motivation potential for this approach.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan O'Mara, who is the founder and COO of Circuit Launch and Mechlabs. Circuit Launch is a space for hardware entrepreneurs to work in Oakland, California, and Mechlabs is a project-based course to learn robotics. This interview is mostly about Mechlabs, but talks about the origins of Circuit Launch, including how it is not a maker or coworking space and its business model. For Mechlabs, we talk about several of its aspects that make it different than a university education in robotics, including how there are mentors not instructors, how projects are scoped, and how people are invited to work on what is most interesting to them. We also talk about the future of Mechlabs and how it fits with current universities.

A few days ago, Robotics Today hosted an online seminar with Professor Carlotta Berry from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. In her talk, Carlotta presented the multidisciplinary benefits of robotics in engineering education. In is worth highlighting that Carlotta Berry is one of the 30 women in robotics you need to know about in 2020. I will describe how it is used at a primarily undergraduate institution to encourage robotics education and research. There will be a review of how robotics is used in several courses to illustrate engineering design concepts as well as controls, artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, and software development.

While the state of industrial robotics education is in disarray, the issue does not lay with educators trying to develop curriculums to teach students robotics. Educators are following a decades-old approach that focuses on difficult to use, brand-specific robot skills. Educators need a new approach, one that leverages advances in technology to make robot programming easier rather than doubling down on just delivering an outdated version of robotics education. The challenges stem from a stubborn industry, where vendors create their own unique walled gardens, with their own robot programming language and associated interfaces. Such approaches make it difficult to teach the full set of skills students need to deploy automation when they get to their new jobs.

The American Association for Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2004 Spring Symposium Series, Monday through Wednesday, March 22-24, at Stanford University. The titles of the eight symposia were (1) Accessible Hands-on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Education; (2) Architectures for Modeling Emotion: Cross-Disciplinary Foundations; (3) Bridging the Multiagent and Multirobotic Research Gap; (4) Exploring Attitude and Affect in Text: Theories and Applications; (5) Interaction between Humans and Autonomous Systems over Extended Operation; (6) Knowledge Representation and Ontologies for Autonomous Systems; (7) Language Learning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective; and (8) Semantic Web Services. Each symposium had limited attendance. Most symposia chairs elected to create AAAI technical reports of their symposium, which are available as paperbound reports or (for AAAI members) are downloadable on the AAAI members-only Web site. This report includes summaries of the eight symposia, written by the symposia chairs.

This editorial introduction presents an overview of the robotic resources available to AI educators and provides context for the articles in this special issue. We set the stage by addressing the tradeoffs among a number of established and emerging hardware and software platforms, curricular topics, and robot contests used to motivate and teach undergraduate AI. Yet it is only recently that physically embodied agents have become a viable tool in the undergraduate AI classroom. Examples of the flurry of activity in this area include competitions and exhibitions, the growing options for lowcost robot hardware and software, and a number of recent workshops and symposia. This special issue of AI Magazine grew out of the 2004 AAAI spring symposium on Accessible, Hands-on AI and Robotics Education.

In 2015, a poll of 200 senior corporate executives conducted by the National Robotics Education Foundation identified robotics as a major source of jobs for the United States. Indeed, some 81% of respondents agreed that robotics was the top area of job growth for the nation. Not that this should come as a surprise: as the demand for smart factories and automation increases, so does the need for robots. According to Nearshore Americas, smart factories are expected to add $500 billion to the global economy in 2017. In a survey conducted by technology consulting firm Capgemini, more than half of the respondents claimed to have invested $100 million or more into smart factory initiatives over the last five years.

Robotics is a multidisciplinary area of study across computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Robotics covers the study, design, manufacture, and use of robots in various applications. Robotics, computer vision, activity recognition, path planning, and the many other disciplines where computers interface to physical environments have proven to be a major source of inspiration and crucial new insights into artificial intelligence. Human-robot interaction has become a major concern as many robots have been used in real-world applications. For this year, this track features a number of robotics projects of Summer Research Experience for Undergraduate from the Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact Alliance.