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From left: Benjoe Juliano, Ramesh Varahamurti,
and Renee Renner
Photo by Jeff Teeter
Proving Their Mettle
Thanks to a major federal
grant, robots like AIBO will help fetch a new generation of students
By marion harmon
From the first time the word “robot” was publicly
uttered, in Czech playwright Karel Capek’s 1921 play R.U.R.
(Rossum’s Universal Robots), the thought of humanoid
machines replacing humans has both repelled and fascinated us. We
don’t want to live next door to the Terminator or be suspended
in a matrix, but we suspect that it could happen in the distant
future—if not sooner.
The reality is much less grim and yet equally if not more fascinating
than the dark scenarios propagated by science fiction. NASA’s
twin Mars Exploration Rovers, which landed in January after a six-month
space flight, are similar to past rovers, but these robots are larger—the
size of a small golf cart—and have more than 1,000 times the
memory capacity of the earlier Sojourner rover. Closer to home,
the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba was flying off the shelves at
Christmas. With the touch of a button, the self-propelled unit uses
intelligent navigation technology to clean any floor, avoiding obstacles
and shutting itself off when done—not exactly George Jetson’s
domestic robot Rosie, but a bargain at $199.99.
One of the most recognizable consumer robots, Sony’s AIBO,
a small metal dog that performs tricks, has taken up residence in
California State University, Chico’s new Intelligent Systems
Laboratory. The lab is one of three initiatives funded by a National
Science Foundation grant. Three professors, Benjoe Juliano and Renee
Renner in computer science and Ramesh Varahamurti in mechanical
and mechatronic engineering, won the $346,000 grant and plan to
use people’s fascination with robots as a way to attract new
students, especially underrepresented groups.
“We are interested in getting more women and minorities into
computer science and engineering,” says Juliano. “We’ve
experienced, even in other institutions we’ve been at, that
as you move from the freshman into the sophomore and junior levels,
the number of women steadily declines. We came across some work
by people who used robots to do recruitment and retention, and thought
it just made sense to pursue a grant to do this.”
The grant will help fund three initiatives: the lab, where faculty
from different departments can teach students how to program and
control robots of varying complexity; new robotics classes team-taught
by the three professors who will weave together their two disciplines;
and a summer robotics camp for junior high girls.
“The project is critical to both information systems and mechatronic
programs and the education process of our students,” says
Ken Derucher, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science,
and Technology. “This state-of-the-art lab sets a standard
that is not currently at other universities. It will also help us
in our MESA [Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement] Program
with K–12 students to attract them to CSU, Chico and make
the students aware of engineering programs. This would help to raise
the underrepresented population over time.”
Renner and Juliano’s research has been in artificial intelligence,
a technology that makes computers behave more like humans in executing
and solving problems, actually teaching them to be more intelligent
and more autonomous. AI consists of various technologies, including
expert systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic
algorithms. Renner’s focus is on artificial neural networks,
and Juliano’s focus is on fuzzy logic, which works with uncertainty
and partial truths. While working with robots will undoubtedly be
exciting for students, the process of making robots intelligent
and autonomous— not directed by remote control—is a
complex computer programming task.
“When we tell a robot to go left or right when an object is
near, what do we mean by ‘near’?” asks Juliano.
“Commands like that require some sophisticated programming.”
While Juliano has worked with students on simulations of fuzzy systems,
none have had implementation in a robot until now. “Finally
I get to show everything that we teach in class, not just theory,”
says Juliano. “Although theory is important, they need to
see how it actually works.”
Robots to the rescue
Much of the grant, about $250,000, is earmarked for acquiring the
robots, which have been arriving on campus since early December
(via parcel post; they can’t make their own travel arrangements—yet).
The students will program and control three levels of robots: beginning,
intermediate, and advanced. The basic robots include LEGO Mindstorms,
a popular consumer product that can be assembled in different configurations.
These robots will be used in the Summer Robotics Camp and some of
the introductory courses using the Intelligent Systems Laboratory.
The intermediate robots include the Lynxmotion Carpet Rover and
the Parallax Boe-Bot. Boe-Bot’s multiple capabilities include
seeking and avoiding light sources, following walls to solve mazes,
covering various types of terrain, and communicating with another
robot by following the instruction of the robotics text. Junior-
and senior-level students will work primarily with the intermediate
robots.
The advanced robots include the AIBO “dog” and ones
made by iRobot, the company that produces Roomba. Some of the robots,
like the ATRV-Mini, will be programmed to perform search and rescue.
Juliano says robots were used in missions at the Sept. 11 disaster
sites, and the NSF grant directs CSU, Chico to work on building
similar intelligent robots. These robots will be used primarily
in graduate student and faculty research projects.
Robots will be used competitively and cooperatively. While some
will engage in contests like those in the “robot battle”
TV shows, others will be programmed to work in teams. “While
teaching robots to play soccer may seem like a game, it is an important
step for intelligent systems to learn to work together,” says
Juliano.
Teamwork is also key among the professors and students, with the
disciplines of computer science and mechatronic engineering meshing
to create machines that mimic human behavior. The undergraduate
mechatronic engineering degree program at CSU, Chico, the first
of its kind in the country, has grown from five students when it
debuted in 1998 to about 100 today. The program marries mechanical
engineering with computer engineering, explains Varahamurti, whose
experience with robotics goes back to 1975, when he helped automate
a foundry in India after getting his mechanical engineering degree.
“The vision of mechatronic engineering is to bring about machines
that can become intelligent over time by learning,” he says.
“That’s where the intelligent systems part comes in.
You can’t have just intelligence without the body, and you
can’t have the body without the brain. There are going to
be 100 students who will be capable of not only designing the mechanical
and computer engineering side, but they will also be able to incorporate
the intelligent systems, the brain part of it.”
Working in teams will not only benefit students during the class,
it will also have real-world application. “Bringing mechatronics
in adds that expertise in control theory and mobile devices,”
says Renner. “This will give the students a great opportunity
to experience bringing these things together for an intelligent,
mobile device. They can have some real experience they can take
into the workplace.”
Students will also have digital images and videos of their projects
that they can add to their portfolios to demonstrate a documented
process that they went through. In keeping with CSU, Chico’s
long tradition of participating in team competitions, they plan
to enter their robots in industry competitions.
Hands-on experience
The first class funded by the grant, Robotics and Machine Intelligence,
began this spring and filled quickly. Students are involved in every
aspect of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory project, from inventory
and robot assembly to curriculum development and planning for the
summer camp. In addition to the students enrolled in the course,
15 student assistants—some paid, some volunteer—assist
in the project.
“The professors are really great at involving us in every
part of the project,” says computer science graduate student
Felipe Jauregui Jr. “Right now I’m working on the physics
part of the curriculum for the summer camp.”
Jauregui, one of four paid student research assistants in the project,
hopes to get involved in the robotics industry after graduation.
“Often people go to school and don’t get much hands-on
experience,” he says. “Being able to actually demonstrate
that I have and am able to do this will be so valuable. I think
it’s going to bring a lot of new students and new interest
in getting involved in the sciences.”
Mechatronic engineering undergraduate Charissa Garcia is one of
the volunteer assistants. She checked out one of the six-legged
Lynxmotion Hexapod robots during the winter break to assemble and
program it. “I’m involved in the ballroom dance program,
so I wanted to get one robot to lead the cha-cha and the other robot
to follow it,” says Garcia. “This involves one robot
teaching the other what to do through infrared technology, which
is pretty challenging. The equipment is really expensive to buy
on a personal basis, so using it through the university gives you
the opportunity not only to work on it yourself, but also to see
what other people are doing.”
Garcia, an officer in the Society of Women Engineers branch on campus,
will also volunteer with the summer camp. She has experienced firsthand
the stigma and prejudice experienced by girls and women interested
in science and math. “People ask questions like, ‘You’re
in engineering, isn’t that hard?’ ‘Why do you
want to be with all those men?’ ‘Are you a lesbian?’
” says Garcia. “Junior high is a period when these girls
are starting to learn about their sexual identity and gender roles.
So it’s really important to not just say that women can do
whatever they want, but also to show them with things like the summer
camp, where they will see women who work in this field.”
Renner values the opportunity to support young women. “As
a woman in a field that has always been inundated by men, I felt
it was important to encourage women to be in the discipline,”
she says. “There are a lot of women who have the intellectual
capability to do it and do it well, just like men. I’ve always
wanted to be a good role model for that.”
Garcia says the lab’s focus on artificial intelligence will
help her in her career. “I would like to create intelligent
prosthetics,” she says. “Right now, prosthetics don’t
really have the ability to sense from touch. For example, they can’t
feel the difference between hot coffee and cold Jell-O. Integrating
the artificial intelligence and the response system of a prosthetic
into a body, that’s what I want to do. The experience in artificial
intelligence will give me the background to do the electronics and
software components of the intelligent prosthetics.”
Move over, MIT
The idea for the project began four years ago, and going through
the grant process was a learning experience in itself. “When
I came to CSU, Chico in 1998, I was teaching AI classes, and Dean
Derucher encouraged us new folks to go to Washington, D.C., to interview
there, get ideas for concept papers, white papers, and projects
with different government agencies,” recalls Renner. “I
also, on two occasions, went to Washington to be a panel reviewer
for NSF, which gave me the inside scoop on what an NSF grant should
look like, what reviewers look for, and that really helped.”
Juliano also went to Washington as an NSF panel reviewer, and the
college supported both professors in attending a summer program
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about embodied intelligence
in 1999.
“This provided both encouragement and excitement for our current
pursuits in robotics and embodied intelligence (intelligent systems
embodied in a physical, typically mobile, artifact/device),”
says Renner. “Our dean has also been willing to match NSF
funds with faculty release time for the project. It shows how solid
support and faith in our potential, coming from administrators,
has the potential to pay off, for the faculty, students, the college,
and the campus. We couldn’t do it without that faith and support.”
The three professors applied for the very competitive NSF grant
in January 2003 and heard they were successful at the start of the
fall term. Along with the robots, the grant pays for two graduate
students and two undergraduate students as research assistants for
three years. The professors also are in the process of establishing
an Institute for Research on Intelligent Systems, which will manage
the use of the laboratory and foster collaborative work between
university constituents and other institutions.
“I’m very excited that we at Chico State can do this
at an undergraduate level, which is an absolutely mind-boggling
thing in itself,” says Varahamurti. “These things are
only happening at large, famous schools like MIT. You expect it
from MIT, not Chico, and even when you watch what MIT is doing,
it is being done by graduate students, often close to or at Ph.D.
level. Twenty years ago, our students would not have been able to
figure out many of these things, but now, with mechatronic engineering
and intelligent systems, they will know.”
A Woman’s Place
Women earned almost half (49%) of all bachelor’s degrees
in science and engineering in 1998, according to a 2003 report by
the National Science Foundation. So with this clear interest in
science and technology, why do so few women pursue degrees in computer
science and engineering? A report compiled by the Society of Women
Engineers from NSF and census data says that only 27 percent of
bachelor’s degrees in computer science and only 18 percent
in engineering went to women in 1998. Nationwide in 1999, only 10.6
percent of all employed engineers were women. What makes women stop
pursuing education in engineering and computer science?
While there are many answers to this question, one factor is the
effort—or lack of it—to welcome women and girls into
these fields. “At least 50 percent of the planet is female,
and we don’t have anywhere close to that representation in
engineering,” says Ramesh Varahamurti. “We need to find
out what it is that’s causing females to lose interest. Some
studies show that up to sixth grade, female students are very good,
very competitive with the boys in math and science. Somewhere along
the line, in junior high, things begin to change.”
Thus the idea for the junior high girls summer camp. ”We’re
trying to catch them before high school, so when they start planning
their high school curriculum, maybe they’ll get involved with
more math and science classes,“ says Felipe Jauregui Jr.,
the graduate research assistant who’s designing the camp curriculum.
“We’re including not just robotics and programming,
but also physics, math, and other sciences that can be taught through
robotics.”
“Many underrepresented students do not have the opportunity
to explore projects like the ones offered through the Summer Robotics
Camp,” says graduate research assistant Elena Kroumova. “I
think that young women should be targeted in particular because
many of them do not seem to be encouraged to focus on math and science,
and the camp would be an excellent opportunity for them to explore
their imaginations and stimulate further studies in science.”
If the camp for girls is a success, they hope to branch out to different
age groups and target groups, including junior high boys, disadvantaged
children, and senior citizens. “We’re working with MESA
on the girls camp; they already have summer programs,” says
Benjoe Juliano. “We’re interested in girls who are already
successful in math, to encourage them more, and we’re also
interested in girls who kind of hate math, because maybe it will
change their perspective and interest level.”
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