The "robot garden" is dozens of changing LED lights and a hundred or more origami robots that can swim, crawl, and blossom like flowers. It was developed by a team at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. The garden is controlled by any Bluetooth tablet-operated system that illustrates their modern research on varying algorithms through the robotic sheep, origami flowers that can blossom and change colors, and robotic ducks that can change shape when put into an oven. Researchers say the "robot garden" is a visual symbol of their latest work in computing, as well as an artistically appealing way to attract young adults to learn programming.
The system is controlled by simple "control by click" feature or "control by code" feature. "Control by click" feature allows you to control the system by clicking on individual flowers, while "control by code" feature allows you to control the garden by implementing your own commands and programs in real time. Students' ability to see their code in a physical environment causes them to understand how programming is a cool and unique ability to have. The system has sixteen tiles connected via Arduino controllers and programmed through search algorithms that test the space in different ways. One of these algorithms is 'graph-coloring' which ensures no two adjacent tiles share the same color. The garden tests different algorithms for over 100 robots, allowing a lot of experimentation on the system. For example, an MIT researcher developed a system that uses object-recognition algorithms to make robots water, harvest, and take different metrics of a vegetable garden. The "robot garden" is an example of how young students and adults need to experience the real world applications of programming in order to motivate them to understand and appreciate the unique and innovative aspects of coding,
Video Illustrating how it works:
References:
http://cacm.acm.org/news/183473-can-an-led-filled-robot-garden-make-coding-more-accessible/fulltext
http://news.mit.edu/2015/can-led-robot-garden-make-coding-more-accessible-0218
https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/02/23/can-an-led-filled-robot-garden-make-coding-more-accessible-code-robotics-womeninstem/
Hey William!
ReplyDeleteNice Blog! This seems to be such an interesting garden and is a great way to develop interest in computer science. I am assuming that since this is trying to introduce computer science to students, there must be programs that have been written already and are stored using data structures that help make the run-time efficient. You should check out my blog to learn more about data structures.
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