CS80: History

history

Beginnings

Robotics at Earlham is not the obvious choice for a senior seminar. The subject matter is not all that foreign, but the typical robotics programs at colleges and universities involves big budgets and large-scale planning.

Without these things and with a lot of determination, the CS80 class has made robotics at Earlham a reality. The project was conceived by Charlie Peck and Tim McLarnan, both professors at Earlham, and they were later joined by Physics prof Lew Riley. Tim and Charlie were looking for a seminar that would combine all of the skills and theory that is a part of the Computer Science program at Earlham, from hardware construction and organization to software engineering and design theory. Fred G. Martin's Handyboard design offered all of these things and more, and was attainable with a small budget and no long-term planning.

Prototype

The first board was constructed by Tim and Charlie in conjunction with the course's "consultants", Tim's two sons who worked diligently on constructing the prototype robot during the summer before Fall courses. They noticed and recorded various issues in construction and wrote some preliminary software to run the robot. By the time classes had started, they had created a robot that could use its touch and lights sensors for wall-following/avoidance and light detection.

Launch

The class began with a meeting that had nothing to do with Robotics. Because of some scheduling errors, there were twelve people signed up for the class and only ten slots available, complicated by the fact that there were non-computer science majors and non-seniors hoping to participate Through the process of consensus and by the kindness of two individuals, the class makeup was determined and the unholy meeting time of 8 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays was established.

Students spent the first week of classes constructing the robots from the kit, some working 8 to 10 hours per day on construction, sometimes more on the weekend. Bot construction was generally successful, though there were some cases of misinterpreted instructions and poor soldering. One group, Chris Hardie and Alex Reeder, was about 3/4ths of the way through assembly when they found serious problems and inconsistencies within their hardware construction. They had to order another kit which was also determined to be constructed wrong, and ended up using the prototype robot while Charlie and Tim and Lew worked on the broken bots (nicknamed Marge and Marge II). The class looked down and saw that there were 5 working robots and the class was pleased.