Fernando Gonzalez

Small is Beautiful: Embedded Systems Projects in an Undergraduate Software Engineering Program

This paper addresses the issue of educating software engineers in embedded systems development. With the rapidly growing markets of embedded devices and their interconnections due to the ubiquitous presence of the Internet, leading to the emergence of cyberphysical systems, educating software engineers and computer scientists on these subjects at the college level is becoming essential. The paper presents an approach to teaching software development for small embedded devices with lab projects at the undergraduate level, to match the fast pace of technological progress and challenges of real-world applications.

A robotic arm simulator software tool for use in introductory robotics courses

With the rising popularity of robotics in our modern world there is an increase in engineering programs that do not have the resources to purchase expensive dedicated robots but find a need to offer a basic course in robotics. This common introductory robotics course generally covers the fundamental theory of robotics including robot kinematics, dynamics, differential movements, trajectory planning and basic computer vision algorithms commonly used in the field of robotics. The nature of this material almost necessitates the use of robotic hardware to allow the students to practice implementing the theory they learn in class. That is, to fully understand the material, it is necessary for the students to implement algorithms and observe the results on hardware. This paper introduces a software based educational tool designed to be used in introductory robotics courses. The software simulates the geometry of motion (kinematics) of a two link robotic arm and is used by students to implement algorithms based on the robots kinematic equations. This includes the use of inverse kinematic equations used to determine the joint inputs based on the desired location of the end-effector, as well as trajectory planning and the study of differential movements. It also include a robotic image processing tool that helps the student design robotic vision algorithms. This tool provides a low cost solution to situations where purchasing expensive robotic arms typically needed for this course is not possible, where the existing equipment does not allow for direct joint programming, or simply for on-line robotics courses.

Online Course on Cyberphysical Systems with Remote Access to Robotic Devices

The objective of this paper is to present an approach and experiences with introducing robotic devices accessible online to a course on Cyberphysical Systems in an undergraduate Software Engineering program. A closer look at both technologies, online labs and cyberphysical systems education, reveals that they are not in sync. Remote labs have embraced a wide variety of science and engineering disciplines, but they are not popular in software engineering. On the other hand, software engineering education, being crucial to the development of cyberphysical systems has not focused on such systems by any measure. This project and paper aim at addressing this gap.

Teaching Joint-Level Robot Programming with a New Robotics Software Tool

With the rising popularity of robotics in our modern world there is an increase in the number of engineering programs that offer the basic Introduction to Robotics course. This common introductory robotics course generally covers the fundamental theory of robotics including robot kinematics, dynamics, differential movements, trajectory planning and basic computer vision algorithms commonly used in the field of robotics. Joint programming, the task of writing a program that directly controls the robot’s joint motors, is an activity that involves robot kinematics, dynamics, and trajectory planning. In this paper, we introduce a new educational robotics tool developed for teaching joint programming. The tool allows the student to write a program in a modified C language that controls the movement of the arm by controlling the velocity of each joint motor. This is a very important activity in the robotics course and leads the student to gain knowledge of how to build a robotic arm controller. Sample assignments are presented for different levels of difficulty.

CleverNAO: The intelligent conversational humanoid robot

The objective of this work was the creation of a robotic system that any person could talk to in the English language, in particular, pairing an artificial intelligence algorithm that processes natural language with a physical robot that could synthesize speech. The result, called CleverNAO, is a successful combination of a chatbot application named Cleverbot with the NAO robot doing the speech synthesis. An attempt to include speech recognition was also made, with mixed success.

FAST learning: A new didactic method in software engineering

A new didactic method is proposed and described, called FAST, which is an acronym from Follow Accomplishments of Senior Teams, to attract to the discipline students in low level courses and reduce attrition rates. In essence, the method relies on bringing software engineering student teams from senior project courses, who have accomplished some significant results in their classes, to demonstrate and showcase their projects in introductory courses in software engineering and in other STEM disciplines. Students in lower level courses, with assistance of instructor, then analyze the projects specifications, designs, and implementations, and find out about the principles and specific details of software development on a real case study, which is available at hand. Then, depending on each projects scope, an instructor in a lower level course may choose one of the techniques, such as a demo, exercise, assignment, or even experiment, to enforce learning and motivate the students to increase their chances of staying in the degree program or even switching to the software engineering program from other majors. Typical software projects involved in the first edition of FAST learning were on robotics, wireless sensor networks, microcontrollers, data acquisition and control, and others. These activities definitely engaged students in lower level courses and caused significant excitement about prospects of learning in higher level courses and pursuing careers in software engineering.

Building an undergraduate robotics laboratory serving the STEM curriculum

Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) Software Engineering program has developed over recent years a sophisticated undergraduate software engineering lab for use in embedded and cyberphysical systems and related project courses. A number of teaching modules have been put in place, with emphasis on security, complex systems, and web-based access. The objective of the current project is the development of a lab specific to robotics applications that can be used across the undergraduate STEM curricula. Developing such a lab has an impact on the advancement of teaching in STEM disciplines by connecting the lab to multiple STEM related courses. This paper outlines the major concepts and presents first results.