Re: [school-discuss] Way cool Linux Robotics web app

[dblank@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Thought I'd mention a couple of projects and facts about robots,
education, and open source:

- most research-level robotics is done under Linux

- there are many open-source robotics and AI projects, including Python
Robotics at pyrorobotics.org, which lets users use Python (I'm involved
with that project)

- you can use Interactive C for many competitions, like Botball.org, which
runs under a variety of OSs. Interactive C is free.

- there is a new project underway to develop educational materials using
robots. See roboteducation.org. I am involved (and so is Microsoft). The
code we are developing will be "shared source" and will not require any
proprietary code. You can read some reviews there
(blog.roboteducation.org) of low-cost robots for education.

I'd be very interested in helping anyone get started in educational
robotics; drop me a line if interested, or post a comment on the blog.

-Doug

> A Brandon teacher just asked me about helping her teach robotics as an
> enrichment activity.  Went to several commercial web sites and there are
> of course kits galore, but much to my chagrin, most of the CD ROM
> softare requires, you guessed it, Windows.
>
> So I googled "Linux robots" and found lots of cool stuff, but this one
> has to be the best:
>
> http://www.linuxrobots.org/wiki/michael_shiloh
>
> You log on via ssh, and you can open, edit, and compile programs and
> then run them on the robot, and it includes a webcam to see it in
> action.  It's currently on exhibition and unavailable but should be back
> online in August.  The students get to play NASA engineers programming a
> rover on the other side of the country.
>
> Now that I don't have to spend all my volunteer time fixing Windows 9x
> PCs, I can turn my efforts to more direct educational support
> activities...my C programming is old, but I'm sure I can show the
> teacher how to modify an existing program and recompile and run it.
>
> Here's the other benefit of K12LTSP: it frees the parent technology
> volunteers from repair work to helping teachers develop new lessons and
> enrich students using technology that works.  William says it best:
> K12LTSP allows us to spend our time adding features and capabilities,
> not spending hours of it getting back to square one.
>
> Regards,
> Daniel
>
>
> --
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Georgia Open Source Education Foundation
>