Interdisciplinary Teaching with the Versatile Low-Cost Modular Robotic Platform EDMO

Abstract

The field of robotics embraces the interconnection of a variety of disciplines not only in research but also in teaching. For students this interconnection of disciplines can provide a different quality of understanding of theory and practice since it allows breaching, recapitulating, and interlinking knowledge and skills that otherwise might be taught only separately in a variety of well-contained courses. This paper describes the approach and material of a successfully running robotics course at Maastricht University that provides students with the opportunity to study and develop locomotion control with central pattern generators on a custom-made, low-cost, versatile EDucational MOdular robotic platform called EDMO. For these studies, students follow the chain of research and development from neuroscience over mathematical modeling, control theory, programming embedded systems, to the experimentation with robotic hardware that is supported by approaches from optimization and machine learning for optimal control parameter identification. The course thus interconnects a variety of disciplines and provides students with insights for instance into locomotion control and learning and provides a vivid view on aspects of numerical mathematics and calculus. We share teaching material and hardware design files for this course that is highly appreciated by our students in the hope that other teachers and students can benefit.