Using Robotic Competitions in Undergraduate Philosophy Courses: Studying the Mind through Simple Robotics.

Robotic competitions can add a great deal to undergraduate philosophy courses. I have successfully used Lego MindStorms kits in this manner to teach; logic, philosophy of AI, philosophy and cognitive robotics, and issues in the philosophy of technology. The following presentation will describe some of my hard won experience in finding the best ways to cheaply and efficiently introduce robotic competition activities into the classroom, which will be of interest to any educators regardless of their disciplines. Why use Robotic Competitions in the Philosophy Classroom? There are certain significant tradeoffs to using robotic competitions in the undergraduate classroom. First, they take time away from typical classroom activities like engaging with texts. Second, students come into the classroom with varying technical abilities, and in a humanities class they often have little or no programming experience. Third, this activity requires certain startup and maintenance costs. And finally, competition, in and of itself, can have a negative pedagogical impact and can also result in a harmful social split in the class along gender lines. There are ways to mitigate these difficulties and I will share some of my ideas on this in the next section. The positive results of using robotic competitions in the classroom are significant though and worth the extra effort. In my philosophy classes I have used them to add considerable insight into these topics: • Introduction to AI • Computationalism • Cognitive Robotics • Embodiment and Mind • Emergent Behavior • Sociable Robotics • Robotics and Society Copyright © 2002, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. • Philosophy of Technology • Philosophy of Engineering Actually spending time working with real examples of AI and robotics gives the student many opportunities to see the topic from standpoints that are difficult or impossible to convey in a standard lecture. For example, they can learn through direct experience what the difference is between a logicist approach to robotics as opposed to one that runs on subsumption architecture. And in fact they can put these two approaches in to direct competition with each other by one team building and programming a robot from the logicist paradigm and the other using subsumtion architecture and see for themselves which is better at solving an actual maze. Dealing with the Difficulties I keep expecting to encounter the ‘wired’ generation in my classroom; students who find interacting with technology second nature. I do not think this generation actually exists. Certainly they are skilled in the use of information technology, but they are just as in the dark about why it works and how to program it as any other generation. This means that in order to get good results one must make sure the technology is easy for the instructor to teach. I use the Lego MindStorms technology and have had great results since it is not intimidating and there are brilliant programming platforms available that were developed by fans of the kits that work for any skill level of programmer. Another subtle factor that helps in the humanities class is that this class attracts students from science and engineering as well, who help the others in their groups learn the technology greatly reducing the workload of the instructor. As a happy side effect it helps me advance my philosophical agenda of attempting to dissolve the distinction between the sciences and the humanities, but that discussion should be left for a different paper. Cost is probably the Achilles heal of any project that attempts to bring robotics to the classroom. In my experience, humanities Deans are not opposed to the idea of using technology in the classroom, but they are also not always forthcoming with funding opportunities either. The kits I use are not very expensive and they are specifically designed for educational use, but they do greatly exceed the budgets of most philosophy departments. Each robotic kit costs around $250.00 and you need one kit per three to five students. I have had some luck with grants from industry and other sources, but I must admit the cost of batteries and replacement parts come out of pocket. The worst upkeep expense has been the abuse of the kits by students. To counter this I have to have a strict policy where their grades are adversely effected by lost or damaged equipment. But more importantly, it is competition itself that is the trickiest problem to overcome. On the positive side, competition is a great motivator for certain students. The energy and excitement level in the class grows exponentially over that found during event he best lectures. Competition is enough to get students to work overtime on their projects and they invest real interest and ownership in the results. Unfortunately, if you give the students too much leeway in the competitions you will not get good results. In my first forays into this pedagogical style, I noticed the class moved far away from the rational discourse we tend to teach in philosophy and into something more like a cock fight. This was very intimidating for some of my students and in one instance even resulted in a very emotional conflict between two students. To mitigate this I have implemented a few policies. I shy away from summo style competitions. While they are fun and a great way to teach about the power of gear ratios, they have a tendency to attract aggressive behavior best left out of the classroom. They also can be costly on an economic level. Students have burned out expensive electric engines by improperly designing their robots. I prefer to have the students compete against a challenge of some sort, most commonly a maze or other task. This way they are in a contest against the task and not directly against each other. There is still the motivation to be the fastest through the maze, for instance, but since there is no physical violence directed at their machine, they take it far less personally when they lose. The most successful strategy I have used to date is to have the students compete to come up with the best project. In this way it is more of a meta competition and has more of a ‘science fair’ feel. Using this method students can often come up with ideas that the instructor would never have conceived. It is also vital to break down the standard gender and socio economic divisions one finds in this kind of activity. While Lego has been altering its image in the past decade, it is still considered a toy for ‘boys’ by the generation of students coming through academia at this time. To mitigate this, I tend to make sure the groups are equal in gender and try to be conscious of the personalities of each member to prevent serious mismatches. Legos are also toys that are relatively expensive and only students of a certain economic means will have had any significant experience using these ingenious bricks. So you must spend some time going over the basics of how to use these tools and form your groups so that in each one there is at least one person that can use the technology. It is very much worth the extra effort to correctly compose your workgroups and come up with a proper challenge for them. I have had wonderful results where nontraditional students have informed me that they never thought they were the type of person that could do robotics, but because of their experience in my class, they felt it was a career path they now wanted to explore.