The Future of Robotics
As computers become smaller, and the field of nanotechnology grows, the ability to augment human intelligence with robotic intelligence will occur at many levels.
You will be able to interact with robotic intelligence in your home, at school, and on the streetcorner.
NXT and Other Robotics Systems
Once you enter the robotics community, you will find that resources on the internet are extensive. There are sites for beginners, for teachers, and for hobbyists. The areas of interest range from robot construction, to programming, to school curriculum for grades elementary through college. These are a few sites to get you started.
Coming Fall 2006!
Lego Education has good support for robotics education, and this Fall they are coming out with Mindstorms NXT, the exciting new version of Lego Mindstorms.
The NXT programmable brick is new, and the set will come with an ultrasonic sensor to "see" movement, internal rotation sensors in the motors, capacity for wireless transmission of programs, and TECHNIC(R) buiding pieces to allow easier buiding of walking robots. Also, a series of Challenges will allow easier entry into the system for first-time users.
Lego will continue to support the RCX system for several years, and the RCX bricks will be able to receive programs out of the NXT software.
We plan to order NXT kits for ExWorks as soon as they are available!
The Center for Engineering Educational Outreach (CEEO) at Tufts supports a website full of programming, building, and curriculum ideas, as they promote engineering education for grades K through 12.
The Handyboard and Handy Cricket microcontrollers, and Radio Shack's VEX Robotics Design System, are robotics kits that allow you to see the computer boards as you build your robot, for an introduction to electronic engineering.
Robotic programming languages range from the iconic Robolab, to a variety of C-based languages. NQC(not-quite-C) and Interactive C (used in the middle-school-level competitions like Botball) serve as bridges to the full C++ coding used in the upper level robotics competitions like FIRST.
If you really want to see what high-school kids are capable of in a fully supported robotics curriculum, check out the projects on Boulette's Robotics Page at this high school in Luxembourg - click on Nic 1.
And to see what's happening at another advanced level, check out Coco, Kismet, and Macaco at MIT's Humanoid Robotics Group.