Robots Can Wear Multiple Hats in the Computer Science Curriculum at Liberal Arts Colleges

Faculty at liberal arts colleges are often challenged to offer a quality education to their students, complete with opportunities for undergraduate research. To guard against a curriculum that is too theoretical, students want to see applications of their course work and tangible results of their efforts. Like all computer science educators, we want to attract students to our discipline. The use of robotics can often be part of the answer in each of these realms. Undergraduate Research Projects Centre College, like many good liberal arts institutions, is anxious to provide its students with opportunities to engage in undergraduate research. Robotics provides a venue where students can make interesting contributions and where an ongoing project can be maintained. In 2004, enabling funds from a professorship were used to purchase a Sony AIBO and a grant from the Kentucky Space Grant Consortium provided stipends for students involved in the project. These resources were available because machine learning and robotics were of interest to the funding agency. A sophomore and two junior level students were involved in the project over the course of two summers and one academic year. The project was centered around the topic of machine learning, specifically reinforcement learning, and the software package pyr