Introducing an experimental cognitive robotics curriculum at historically black colleges and universities

Abstract

A successful collaboration between Spelman College and Carnegie Mellon University led to an NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing project to set up robotics education laboratories and introduce undergraduate instruction in cognitive robotics at three other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We give a brief overview of cognitive robotics and the Tekkotsu software architecture, and describe our experiences teaching computer science students with no previous robotics exposure to program sophisticated mobile robots.