Lego Mindstorms Robotics in a (Very) Small Liberal Arts College

Accessible Hands-on AI and Robotics Education

Volume

Papers from the 2004 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

This paper describes the use of Lego Mindstorms Robotics Innovation Systems ("Mindstorms kits") at Hiram College. Hiram College is a small residential liberal arts college with approximately 900 traditional undergraduate students and no graduate students. I have used the robots in a course called the First Year Colloquium, which is a freshman non-majors course. I hope to use the robots in a 3-week intensive special topics course and in my Artificial Intelligence course, but have not yet done so. In this paper, I describe two instances of the first year colloquium course as well as the constraints that are inherent in the small liberal arts college setting.