skip to main content
10.1145/1254960.1255034acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesc-n-cConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Modular robotics as tools for design

Published: 13 June 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Design is fundamental. In various forms, it permeates engineering, management, architecture and the arts. Design aptitude separates the visionary from the technician. Although many skills, like math or technical writing, are straightforward to quantify and teach, the creativity and processes inherent in design are both more difficult to instill and more difficult to understand.
Unconstrained design is almost impossible. Noted late graphic designer Paul Rand speaks to the benefits of a constrained system as something "without which fruitful and creative work is extremely difficult." [2] Papert addresses this with his concept of the Microworld, [1] a domain-specific constrained environment for experimentation and design education. Microworlds have been shown to be effective tools for design education in domains from creative art to mathematics.
The advent of tiny microcontrollers and inexpensive rapid prototyping technologies has made it easier to create tangible Microworlds outside of the computer screen.
My research focuses on the design of modular robotic systems that allow users to play and experiment freely in computational domains.
roBlocks [3] (http://www.roblocks.org) is a computational construction kit that allows children as young as nine to design and build functional robots by snapping together magnetized plastic modules. roBlocks is a distributed system, with a microcontroller embedded in each 40mm cube. Assembling combinations of Sensor, Actuator and Operator blocks exposes young users to advanced ideas like feedback control, logic and kinematics before they learn to solder or program in C. Advanced users can reprogram the behavior of each module, exploring distributed control.
StickyBricks is a mobile modular robotic system designed as a tangible tool to explore locomotion constraints. Each StickyBrick is a 30mm cube with two circumferential adhesive belts powered by a tiny geared DC motor. Users write simple Python instructions to control the movements of each module, exploring the integrity of various configurations and lattice structures.
I developed the Egglet to enable musicians to add additional dimensions of expression to extant instruments of any type. Comprised of an 8cm plastic egg-shaped "brain" into which various sensors can be plugged, the Egglet is a wireless, battery-powered system that uses a microcontroller to synthesize input from a simple sensor network in order to control audio, video or MIDI data. Musicians with little technical knowledge snap together various sensors and use motion, light, and touch to control the parameters of audio effect.
These three projects represent an effort to understand the design process -- on one hand, the design of modular robotic systems and on the other hand, designs within the constrained environments they create.

References

[1]
Papert, S. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books, New York, 1980.
[2]
Rand, P. Design and the Play Instinct. in Kepes, G. ed. Education of Vision, Braziller, New York, 1965, 154--173.
[3]
Schweikardt, E. and Gross, M.D. roBlocks: A Robotic Construction Kit for Mathematics and Science Education International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 2006

Cited By

View all
  • (2014)A One-Hour Curriculum to Engage Middle School Students in Robotics and Computer Science Using CubeletsDistributed Autonomous Robotic Systems10.1007/978-3-642-55146-8_12(165-176)Online publication date: 2014

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
C&C '07: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition
June 2007
330 pages
ISBN:9781595937124
DOI:10.1145/1254960
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 June 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. constructionism
  2. design
  3. education
  4. modular robotics
  5. toys

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

C&C '07
Sponsor:
C&C '07: Creativity and Cognition 2007
June 13 - 15, 2007
DC, Washington, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 371 submissions, 29%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)4
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 12 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2014)A One-Hour Curriculum to Engage Middle School Students in Robotics and Computer Science Using CubeletsDistributed Autonomous Robotic Systems10.1007/978-3-642-55146-8_12(165-176)Online publication date: 2014

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media