USER’S ACCESS TO THE ROBOTIC E-LEARNING SYSTEM
SyRoTek
Miroslav Kulich, Karel Ko
ˇ
snar, Jan Chudoba, Ond
ˇ
rej Fi
ˇ
ser and Libor P
ˇ
reu
ˇ
cil
Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Cybernetics,
Prague, Czech Republic
Keywords:
e-Learning, Mobile Robotics.
Abstract:
SyRoTek is an e-learning platform for mobile robotics, artificial inteligence, control and other related domains
that provides access to mobile robots moving in the restricted area. The user is able not to only observe
a gathered data using internet interface, but also control the robots in real-time. Unlike majority of existing
e-learning robotic systems developed in the world in which the user can only tele-operate robots, behaviour
of the robots in the SyRoTek system can be modified, as the system allows to run own algorithms developed
by the user. The paper presents two interfaces providing access to the user: web pages and extension of
IDE NetBeans. Furthermore, two courses based on SyRoTek taught at two universities are described and
discussed.
1 INTRODUCTION
With a huge expansion of artificial intelligence and
mobile robotics technologies into many industrial ap-
plications as well as day-to-day activities it is nec-
essary to train students to understand and manage
these technologies. Already young children get fa-
miliarize with the world of science and technology in
kindergartens (Pek
´
arov
´
a, 2008) (St
¨
ockelmayr et al.,
2011), where children (besides other activities) play
with robotic toys like Bee-bot or the animatronic pet
dinosaur Pleo. Older children at basic and secondary
schools are introduced to toy building bricks Lego
Mindstorms or Fischertechnik, which allow to design
and build own robot models and program and con-
trol these models making use graphical software (Al-
tin et al., 2010). Children thus understand main prin-
ciples of robotics and problems needed to be solved
to build an autonomous mobile robot. On the other
hand, poor sensor equipment and fragile construction
disqualify these tools for real-world problems and
long-term experiments. Universities teaching robotics
therefore use more powerful platforms like Videre Er-
ratic or Pioneer or build their own robots. The main
drawback of this approach is a price and a necessity
of a continuous maintenance. This is more important
when more than one robot is used.
The other stream focuses on building robotic lab-
oratories accessible via Internet. These laboratories
allow to share a robotic hardware among a large group
of users from different places. One of the first robots
controlled at distance and available to public was Tel-
egarden (Telegarden, 2008). It has been running since
1995 with 9000 users registered to the system in the
first month of operation. Bradford Robotic Telescope
(Telescope, 2008) is a part of an e-learning course of
which goal is to popularize astronomy. In addition to
open up a unique equipment to a broad public, the
many research programs use telescope for research
of galaxies, supernovas, and black holes. The sys-
tem thus combines a basic research with education by
sharing limited sources. The project RHINO (Rhino,
2008) combines tele-operation with visualization as it
offers a robotic guide in a museum. The robot Xavier
(Simmons et al., 2000) is an autonomous robot oper-
ating in indoor environments of university hallways.
The robot autonomy allows the users to enter high-
level tasks (e.g. go to a specified position), which
are performed by the robot autonomously. Robotoy
(Robotoy, 2008) - a robotic arm with a gripper - al-
lows the users to control it via a web interface. The
user can choose between two cameras from which it
can see robot’s working environment. The robot is
controlled in the command regime, i.e. the user enters
a command which is immediately fulfilled. One of the
most complex robotic e-learning laboratories was de-
veloped at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Lausanne (EPFL). The RobOnWeb project (Siegwart
206
Kulich M., Košnar K., Chudoba J., Fišer O. and P
ˇ
reu
ˇ
cil L..
USER’S ACCESS TO THE ROBOTIC E-LEARNING SYSTEM - SyRoTek.
DOI: 10.5220/0003923202060211
In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 206-211
ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Figure 1: The Arena in the university computer lab (left) and robots operating in the Arena (right).
and Sauc, 1999) is focused on advanced robotic users.
The authors define five fundamental services of web
interface: chat, video, robot control, virtual robot rep-
resentation, and logging. Several configurations are
parts of the project varying mainly in the used robot
platforms and sensors: TeleRoboLab, AliceOnWeb,
Koala on the Web, and Pygmalion on the Web.
SyRoTek - a system for a robotic e-learning is sim-
ilar to the above mentioned systems as it also pro-
vides remote access to robotic actuators and sensory
data and a robot hardware has been integrated into e-
learning framework. The users are able to develop
own algorithms and monitor the behavior of these
algorithms on-line during real experiments. In this
paper we describe the system from user’s point of
view, i.e. user’s access to the system is described
by introduction of two main system interfaces: web
pages and NetBeans integrated development environ-
ment (IDE).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The
next section gives a short overview of the SyRoTek
system as a whole. The sections 3 and 4 describe web
interface to SyRoTek and SyRoTek plugins to Net-
Beans respectively. Courses taught with a support of
the SyRoTek system is shortly presented in the sec-
tion 5. Finally, remarks and future work are discussed
in the conclusion.
2 SyRoTek OVERVIEW
An overview of the SyRoTek realization is depicted in
Fig. 2 (see also (Kulich et al., 2009) for more details
see).
SyRoTek mobile robots move inside an enclosed
area (called Arena, see Fig. 1) consisting of neces-
sary supporting subsystems, e.g. thirteen charging
docks, lighting, visualization cameras, and localiza-
SyRoTek system
Visualisation Cameras
WiFi
Robots in the Arena
Localization
of Robots
Video Server
Main Control
Computer
User’s
Workstations
1
0
EMMI
Audio In
Audio Out
Video In1
Video In3
Video In2
Video Out
Figure 2: SyRoTek overview.
tion subsystem. The Arena (sized 3.5 × 3.8m) was
designed to be reconfigurable without need of human
attendance. This feature was achieved by installing
several moving obstacles, allowed to be retracted un-
der the surface. The presence of moving obstacles
allows to prepare more environment configurations in
the arena before a user starts solving his/her task, as
well to define tasks with dynamically changing envi-
ronment. Moreover, the arena workspace may be di-
vided into several mutually separated closed areas to
create robot working spaces for several users without
affecting each other.
The SyRoTek system contains thirteen S1R robots
developed especially for the system (Chudoba et al.,
2011). The robots are equipped with standard sensors
used in robotics (odometry, accelerometers, compass,
infra-red range sensors, sonars, and optionally with
a laser range-finder). The on-board computer with
Gumstix Overo Fire processor at 600 MHz provides
enough computational power for basic data process-
ing and communication with other components of the
system. Beside UART, SPI, I
2
C, and USB communi-
cation interfaces, the computer provides an on-board
802.11g wireless network module.
USER'SACCESSTOTHEROBOTICE-LEARNINGSYSTEM-SyRoTek
207
The core of the SyRoTek system is the Control
computer where main services of the system run and
which mediates robotic hardware to the user. These
services manage actual state of the robots, arena, pre-
pare robots according to the actual reservations, pro-
vide views to the Arena from cameras placed around
it, etc.
The Player/Stage framework (Gerkey et al., 2003)
has been selected as the main programming interface.
The Player is widely used in the robotic community
as it supports a wide variety of mobile robots and sen-
sors and contains huge library of state-of-the-art al-
gorithms for obstacle avoidance, planning, localiza-
tion, etc. The Stage is a simulator which can substi-
tute a real hardware with the same interface. The user
can therefore develop his/her code with the simulator
and the same code with no or few modifications can
be used for a real robot.
3 WEB INTERFACE
The web pages are the first and most visible access
point to the SyRoTek system. They are designed to
attach the attention of the randomly coming visitors,
facilitate first steps with the system to the users, and
help teachers to perform pedagogical tasks. At first
glance visible part of the main page is the video show-
ing example of the system usage. Unacquainted vis-
itors can here find what the SyRoTek system is and
how to use it. All the information about running
courses, manuals, registration and contact persons are
available even for non-registered users. On the other
hand, interesting parts of the system are accessible for
registered users only: they have access to the whole
e-learning part of the system and can work with the
robots.
All the users (both registered and non-registered)
can read all the materials of all courses, but non-
registered or non-enrolled users cannot access the
quizzes and solve the tasks. The course materials are
open for all to allow users take a informed decision if
the courses are interesting for them and want to regis-
ter into the SyRoTek system and enroll the courses.
The registration is the first step into the SyRoTek
system. The registration form is accessible from the
web page. The user, who wants tho use the SyRoTek
system, provides the full name and affiliated organi-
zation, chooses the username and describes reasons,
why he or she wants to use the system. The process
of registration is not fully autonomous and every user
is individually assessed by a system administrator. If
the user is accepted, an e-mail is sent with the access
information. From this moment, it can enroll into the
offered courses. Some of the advanced courses can
be opened only for the users with a selected level of
knowledge. The level of new users is set to novice and
it is increased as the user completes courses at a given
level.
The reservation system is also accessible from the
web. The current occupation of the arena and robots
is visualized and registered user can reserve free time
slots for enrolled tasks. Every user can reserve the
robots and arena for a given total amount of time.
4 NETBEANS IDE INTEGRATION
Solution of the task often requires algorithm design
and development and its implementation in a certain
programming language. A substantial part of stu-
dent’s work with the SyRoTek system is therefore re-
lated to writing, compiling and debugging of source
codes.
There exists three interfaces of the SyRoTek: web,
command line, and NetBeans IDE. The web interface
is not suitable for development of the programs as
quality of the Internet connection can vary and con-
nection disturbances can easily cause lost of the sig-
nificant part of student’s work. Furthermore, func-
tionality of editors on the web is very limited compar-
ing to nowadays IDEs. The command line interface
is well suitable for development of the programs and
many Unix users are familiar with it. The SyRoTek
system is fully equipped with tools for development
in a command line environment. But many students,
mainly beginners, appreciate the possibility to use an
integrated development environment.
IDE is an environment, in which all the develop-
ment is done and provides many features for author-
ing, modifying, compiling, deploying, version con-
trolling and debugging software. Therefore, we intro-
duce a set of plug-ins for NetBeans IDE, which allows
to develop programs for the SyRoTek system within
IDE. All the plug-ins integrate functionalities acces-
sible from different places of the system.
The usage of the IDE with SyRoTek plug-ins
brings the comfort of code completing, context help,
visual debugging as well as the access to all the
courses, tasks, reservation system and other compo-
nents of the SyRoTek system.
The first step of the work in the NetBeans IDE
is to login into SyRoTek system. After that the IDE
is able to access all the data stored in the SyRoTek
system related to the current user. It is necessary to
mention that the active SyRoTek user account and In-
ternet connection is required for almost all plug-ins to
work. On the other hand, it is possible to work locally
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Figure 3: The introductory web page http://syrotek.felk.cvu
t.cz.
(off-line) after few initial steps.
To start solving a given task, the NetBeans project
is necessary to create. A special type of the project
template - SyRoTek template - has been prepared and
included into the NetBeans. The student chooses the
course and task, which wants to solve, and all required
steps are made automatically.
The result of the task is required to be placed
in the version control system (Subversion) in stu-
dent’s repository in specified directory. The plug-in
checks out the related repository and includes all the
files (task related code skeletons) into the NetBeans
project. NetBeans IDE is then able to natively work
with the repository. As some of the tasks are designed
to be solved by a group of students, the group reposi-
tory allows to cooperate and share the code efficiently.
After the project is created, the student can work
locally without a need of the Internet connection. The
code can be tested in the simulator (Stage), which pro-
vides the same interfaces as a real hardware. This
testing brings the advantage of possibility to manipu-
late the robot and the environment as well as the pos-
sibility to change the simulation speed. Of course,
the student must keep in the mind, that the simula-
tor does not model all the possible sensor noise and
errors. When the student is satisfied with the perfor-
mance of his/her algorithm in the simulator, then it is
time to test the algorithm with real robots and sensors.
The reservation must be done to allow the student
an access to the robots in a given time. The plug-in
simplifies the reservation process, chooses the course
and task according to the project which the student
is currently working on. Appropriate robots with re-
quired sensors are chosen according to the task. The
student just selects time and a required duration of the
reservation. The reservation interface is the same as
on the web, but it is accessible ”at one click” inside
IDE. The Internet connection is necessary for reser-
vation as well as for working with the real hardware.
Again, the SyRoTek plug-in provides the com-
fortable way of running student’s program as well as
the Player server from NetBeans IDE at one click.
The plug-in provides two possible ways, how to con-
nect student’s program with the robot hardware. The
first possibility is to run student’s program locally on
his/her computer and to connect to the control com-
puter with the player server running. The second pos-
sibility is to run student’s program also on the control
computer in his/her user space. Outputs of student’s
program and the Player server are redirected into the
IDE and they are accessible as usual.
The plug-in provides also the visualization (see
Fig. 4) of the simulator or the real situation of the
SyRoTek Arena. The visualization can show not only
a video stream from cameras, but also sensors data,
recent positions of the robots or other user graphical
output. The student can dynamically change the cam-
era, sensors and other visualization parameters.
Figure 4: Visualization SyRoTek plug-in.
As soon as the student considers the task to be
solved, the resulting program should be submitted for
the evaluation. There is also a possibility to submit
the task for the test evaluation. The submission is
done through the version control system. The cur-
rent version of the program is tagged as final and the
evaluation is done on this tagged version of the code.
At the first, the plug-in for submission asks the
user whether the submission is final or testing only.
After that, it takes the local copy of the source code,
USER'SACCESSTOTHEROBOTICE-LEARNINGSYSTEM-SyRoTek
209
checks whether all the files are under version control
and asks the user, what to do with those, which are
not. It performs commit and sets the tag of the version
according the requested type of submission finally.
The whole process of task solving from reading
the specification, implementation, testing in simu-
lator and with real robots, to the final submission
can be done within the NetBeans IDE. On the other
hand, a number of specific situations and advanta-
geous tasks exists, which cannot be covered and man-
aged in the IDE. We are expecting that as the users be-
come more and more advanced, they start to use the
command line tools to solve, if not the whole tasks,
these more complex issues.
5 LABS
The SyRoTek system has been used in courses taught
at Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU),
Czech Republic and University of Buenos Aires
(UBA), Argentina. The Introduction to Mobile
Robotics course help as a part of School of Informat-
ics at UBA in July 2011 was attended by 70 students
and teachers from Argentina and Uruguay with differ-
ent a-priory knowledge of robotics (from beginners
to postgraduate students studying robotics). Its aim
was to introduce main problems and solutions nec-
essary to control an autonomous mobile robot. Be-
sides eight lessons giving a theoretical overview of the
field, the students solved a chosen practical exercise
(wall following, obstacle avoidance or wandering) in-
dependently in teams by two or three under teacher’s
supervision. During the whole course they used the
SyRoTek system: the started with registration and en-
rollment of the course. After that, they were requested
to fill quizzes prepared by the teacher. Moreover, they
were able to download and read learning material and
SyRoTek manuals and documentation. The students
also used forum on SyRoTek pages for asking ques-
tions and reporting bugs in the system, albeit this fea-
ture was not introduced to the students.
The work in the lab was scheduled at the end of
the course. The students were split into two halves by
cca 40 people, each half having one 180 minutes time
slot for the experiments. The labs were performed
in the university computer laboratory, where client
software of the SyRoTek system (NetBeans with Sy-
RoTek plugins, and extended version of Player/Stage)
was installed in the form of virtual machine by the lab
administrator before the course. Student’s work con-
sisted from the following steps:
Login to a computer and launching a virtual ma-
chine with the SyRoTek software.
Launching NetBeans and logging into SyRoTek
system.
Creation of a project from the template prepared
by the teacher.
Development of the application in the simulator.
Running of the application with a real robots.
Although majority of students had no previous ex-
perience with development of a robotic application
and some of them also a little programming experi-
ence, all the teams were able to control the robot in
simulator in dedicated time. Of course, some appli-
cations were not perfect as the controlled robots were
crashing to obstacles. Three of the teams tuned their
applications so that they run real robots in Prague at
distant. To attract the students, the teacher projected
a live video showing an actual situation in the Arena
on the wall, so the students were able to see behavior
of the robots.
The final task for the students was to fill the ques-
tionnaire about their satisfaction with the system and
suggestions for its further improvement. Although
several bugs were detected by the students during the
labs, the overall evaluation was very positive. They
especially appreciated that they were able to develop
a robotic application in a short time and run it on a real
hardware. NetBeans IDE with the prepared code tem-
plates increased the speed of the development process
as it provides all modern tools for writing, debugging,
and running a code.
Students at CTU use the SyRoTek system in Prac-
tical Robotics course in the winter semester 2011/12.
The course is designed as introductory and its aim is
to create an interest in the ideas and possibilities of
intelligent mobile robotics. Therefore, the emphasis
is given to individual student’s work under teacher’s
supervision in the laboratories. The course consist of
six theoretical lectures lasting 90 minutes each at the
beginning of the semester and fourteen lab sessions,
where there is one session per week and lasts 135 min-
utes. The task to be solved in the labs is a modifica-
tion of the exploration problem the goal is to find
mines randomly placed in the environment. The robot
knows its position exactly and is equipped with a laser
range-finder measuring the distance to obsacles, and
mine-detector detecting mines close to the robot. On
the other hand the map of the environment is not avail-
able, so the robot has to build it on its own. The course
is attended by 18 students split into teams by two or
three. The students were introduced to the SyRoTek
system at first two sessions, when they solved obsta-
cle avoidance task. After that, they began to solve the
exploration task, working in the simulator at the first.
From the middle of semester, the students have started
CSEDU2012-4thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
210
experiments with real robots, initially in the lab with
help of the teacher during time dedicated for sessions.
After several attempts, they started to use the system
individually either from the lab at the university or
from home. At the end of the semester, all the groups
presented their functioning code on real robots.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Two interfaces mediating user’s access to the Sy-
RoTek platform were introduced. Each of these inter-
faces has its own purpose and they are complemen-
tary to each other. While the web pages are an input
gate to the system and serve as a source of informa-
tion for incomers as well as for regular system users,
the NetBeans environment extended by a set of plu-
gins facilitates particularly a whole process of user’s
control application development.
Experience from the courses taught with the sup-
port of SyRoTek shows that both interfaces are in-
separable parts of the system and widely used by the
users. Especially the NetBeans IDE is appreciated by
the users in general as they have previous experience
with it or a similar IDE so they do not need to change
their programming habits. IDE is also suitable for be-
ginners, because it provides many functionalities by
one click only and thus familiarization with it is fast.
As mentioned, the current programming interface
is based on Player/Stage system, which is simple to
use and widely expanded in the robotic community.
On the other hand, this system is being substituted by
the Robot Operating System (ROS) (Robot Operating
System, 2011), popularity of which is rapidly increas-
ing. Interfacing SyRoTek into ROS together with re-
lated changes in IDE is therefore one of the main ac-
tivities for the future. Moreover, more courses will be
offered by the system and these will be advertised to
other universities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the Ministry of Ed-
ucation of the Czech Republic under the project No.
7E08006 and by the EU FP7 project No. ICT-216342.
The support of the Grant Agency of the Czech Techni-
cal University in Prague to O. Fi
ˇ
ser is also gratefully
acknowledged.
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