OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 9: Reflection on my Year

First of all I would be remiss if I did not thank the Open-Source Hardware Association and the Sloan Foundation for selecting me to be an Open-Source Hardware Trailblazer Fellow. The year went by so quickly and I cannot belive I’m one month from the end. I never imagined that the work that I naturally do to normalize and amplify seeing Black people doing STEM in order to diversify the profession would grant me such an awesome opportunity. Robotics For the Streets is all about increasing visibility of and access to STEM for minoritized, marginalized and under resourced communities.

I also need to thank all of the great support from Alicia Gibb, Lecia Ductan, Lee Wilkins and the other trailblazer fellows. Also my students: Alex, Katie, Josiah, and Sean and the Rose-Hulman ECE staff: Gary, Mark, Jack, and Ashley.

When I started this journey, I just wanted to design and build my robots and share them with professional community and social media STEM enthusiasts. Then when I needed evaluators my goal was simply to find ten people to give me feedback on the utility of the platform for academics to engage in service, teaching and research. Therefore, imagine my surprise when I had 44 requests for robots and shipped some as far away as Kenya, Turkey, and Colombia.

Although, I was not able to meet all of my initial goals, I am still very proud of what I was able to accomplishment. One of my proudest moments was presenting the results of my work as the keynote speaker at the Open Hardware Summit at NYU Law In Manhattan, NY on Friday, 4/28/23. I met some of the most awesome people and participated in some great workshops, demos and networking sessions.

I will say that although the grant ends on 5/31/23, this is only the beginning. My work will continue, the spark has been lit for open-source robotics and it will not stop. Here is just a sample of the things to come:

    • Present paper on Flower∞Bots at Frontiers In Education Conference 
    • Publish article about Flower∞Bots in IEEE Transactions on Education Journal
    • Document, document and document the entry points for the Flower∞Bots including assembly, programming and basic movement and sensing and control. Refine the design for Rosie∞Bot and present some use cases.
    • Create more curriculum and activities for Flower∞Bots (YouTube, HacksterIO, Instructables, GitHub)
    • Support several faculty planning to use robots for research, class, and summer programs
    • Launch KickStarter to garner support for Flower∞Bots
    • Sell robots on DFRobot.com
    • Collaborate with Arduino and Viam Robotics on robotics education projects

Thank you for sharing with me on this journey. 🙏🏾👩🏾‍🏫👩🏾‍🎓👷🏾‍♀️👩🏾‍💻

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 8: Flower∞Bots Learning Road Map

As my year as an Open-source Hardware Trailblazer comes to an end, I am so appreciative for this opportunity. I have learned so much along this journey, including the proper way to document my project, that there is no such thing as too many resources and that I need to make an entry point for different types of users. Based upon this, I have created a learning road map so that people can determine their entry point for open-source robotics. A novice would start with Lily∞Bot and the top row on the road map. An intermediate user would start with Daisy∞Bot and the middle row on the road map. Finally an expert user would star with Rosie∞Bot and the bottom row on the road map. Therefore, although I include educational levels at the bottom of the chart, it is just as legitimate to use the novice, intermediate, expert levels instead of the school years. I hope you enjoy this journey as I continue to post learning materials to help you grow in robotics and also eventually post the kit and curriculum for sell on a website.

FlowerBots Road Map

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 7: Lily∞Bot Version 2 is ready for action

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I have been just as busy with my research students working on refining the design of the Flower∞bots since the school year began. It is just more difficult to find the time to keep moving forward but we are making progress. To help with that, I have added more student workers to the team including Alex, Katie, and Sean. They picked up the mantle to continue where my summer students, Josiah and Murari left off.

Goal

We still have a goal to send out at least 10 Flower∞bots out to academics by the end of February 2023. They will build, program and test them out and then complete a survey for the viability of using them for teaching, research and service. We will continue to generate learning materials and activities that they can use for their evaluation. The responses to the survey will be used to complete the final report at the conclusion of my one-year as journey as an Open-Source Hardware Trailblazer fellow.

Research Team

Katie is a sophomore computer engineering major in charge of building, programming and testing the Flower∞bots. Alex is a junior mechanical engineering in charge of 3d printing and design revisions on the robots. Sean is junior computer engineering major designing the graphical programming for Arduion and also the proof of concept activities. These activities will be used for the ROSE-BUD SPARK! design competition on April 1, 2023. This is our outreach event where we will test out using the robots with high school students.

Lily∞Bot Version 2

Lily∞Bot Version 2 is now ready for action and available on GITHUB. The changes include the following

      • cinch strap instead of  dual lock for the battery holder to make it easier to change out the batteries on the bottom chassis
      • redesign of motor and sensor mounts so that that they twist in an dfit more securely in the robot
      • Check out Alex detailing all the changes in the new assembly video.

Lily∞Bot Version 2 assembly

Coming Soon

 

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 6: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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Debugging and Troubleshooting

A key skill set for all engineers is to be able to problem solve which involves having debugging and troubleshooting skills. No one writes perfect code or builds a perfect circuit or 3d model. In fact, I’m actually embarrassed to share how many robot chassis, sensor and motor mounts we had to 3d print to get Lily∞Bot built. Then even with us now having a working model, we have discovered some necessary improvements and are already on to versions 2 and 3. It’s called continuous improvement and when you can see better, do better. Even with all of this, a bug still sometimes sneaks through and in the engineering community we like to call it “a feature”, not a bug. In the robotics community, we call it an emergent behavior.

First of all, troubleshooting should always be systematic. In other words, start with a with a clear plan and continue iterating through the possibilities until the problem is corrected. There should be a hypothesis, test plan and evaluation of the results. It’s necessary to identify which errors are systematic and repeatable and which ones are observable and resolvable.

So how does this relate to open source hardware? Well, the most obvious connection is that since the design is completely transparent and typically designed by the user, it is possible to verify all the subsystems with the documentation. Also, since it is white box testing, there should be few errors that are not observable even if not fixable. Then, the next benefit is that with open source hardware just like with most other elements in engineering, the community can help identify errors and also help solve them. Yet another benefit in addition to using their innovation to improve designs. I always tell my students the first step is always check the power first.

Similarly, a systematic process to creating code such as by having a software design plan is integral to debugging your code. In addition, detailed comments are a must as well as logical names for constants, variables, and functions. In programming, some of the most common mistakes in code are opening and not closing parentheses, putting or leaving off semi-colons, or trying to access variables that are not defined or not local or global.

Now that we have shared the joys of scholarship reconsidered for academics and also some of the key components of engineerin such as the design process, creativity, innovation, debugging, troubleshooting, please come along on our journey to bring Lily∞Bot to life. Our open source mobile robot platform to afford academics doing service, teaching, research, and professional development.

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8/28/22 Video Blog: Debugging and Troubleshooting

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 5: Creativity and Innovation

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Creativity and Innovation

Innovation is creativity in context. What this means is that I can be creative about a lot of things such as how I cook dinner, fold my clothes, dress, do my hair, etc. All of those are great activities, but the context of those activities may not be all that impactful to improve or change society. So as an open source hardware trailblazer my innovation is about being creative about how to use mobile robotics to achieve multiple goals that will have some impact on society. As an engineer, many think of the robot as a cute toy but the true power in robotics is beyond just those types activities. Although, they also have some utility such as recruiting diverse audiences to STEM such as when kids have fun building and programming them for competitions like VEX, FLL, Botball, Sea Perch.

Some other goals are related to how to use robotics for outreach, to teach college students robotics and controls and conduct research. However, there are also goals to help academics achieve their professional goals such as promotion, tenure and retention by doing service, improving teaching, conducting research, and growing as professionals. One thing I learned as a professor and that I discussed in my last blog post was that if I can identify a method to have all of these pillars overlap and inform each other then my efforts will be more impactful and relevant. This is what I hope the open source hardware platform will do for academics.

By making Lily-Bot, Daisy-Bot and Rosie-Bot open source, my creativity in context can be extended to new applications with larger impact. This happens when members of the wider more diverse community get their hands and eyes on my design. It will come back to me, bigger and better than ever.  Therefore, as much as I can share with others what I think can be done to modify, extend, improve, my mobile robot platform, the true power happens when I release it to the world, take my hands off, release the reins and see what I get back. I am so excited to send my designs and code out. I’ve already had requests to purchase the Lily-Bot kit and it gives me so much joy to tell them that they don’t have to buy the kits for their kid or high school class but rather can go download the files and change as they like and make their own robot.

That is the true measurement of my impact and value as an academic and educator. This is how I can measure my impact factor which is just as palatable or more to me than being published in a top tier journal. I am seeing the people factor, in real time and these are folks who may never real my journal paper, attend my conference presentation, or enroll in my university course. This is so much more than anything I can do or hope to achieve alone over here in my little corner of the world.

My hope and vision is to eventually share these designs, document what people do with them and publish those results to build a bigger and better mobile robot platform for service, education, and robotics. #RoboticsForTheStreets #MySTEMIsForTheStreets

8/21/22 Video Blog: Creativity and Innovation

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 4: Engineering Design Process

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Engineering Design Process

The engineering design process shown in the following circular figure. It  illustrates that engineering design is a ten-step process that starts with identifying a problem on a need, researching to create design criteria or requirements, find possible solution alternatives, compare them to the criteria, this may involved breaking a complicated problem down into subsystems, having a design review to identify potential issues and then implement and test teh design. It is iterative and may require several cycles to converge on a design that satisfactorily meets the design requirements and criteria. It is also possible that there may be some steps skipped in some of the cycles. How does this relate to the open source hardware process for academics?

Engineering Design Process

There are so many opportunities for an open source academic in this process. The first being that by sharing ideas and a design, feedback can help with alternatives or during the design review to improve components, subsystems or the entire design. By sharing your work with the larger community, it is possible to more quickly get feedback but also more diverse and hopefully better feedback. Open source affords cycling through the process quicker and more often by observing what others yield from the intellectual property. It also illustrates a real world application of the engineering design process that you teach your students in the context of what you do as a professor each and every day.

I have no delusions that my open source mobile robot platform is a perfect solution to robotics for the streets, from service, to education, to research. However, I am confident that by making it openly available to the STEM community as a whole instead of waiting for publication, patents, conference papers, or journal articles, I can more quickly improve upon it and get the substantive feedback that I need to ensure that it meets my goals, design requirements and criteria.

8/14/22 Video Blog: Engineering Design Process

 

OSHWA Trailblazer Blog Post 3: Scholarship Reconsidered

Scholarship Reconsidered

Ernest Boyer states that the role of the professor can no longer be thought of as silos of activity, including teaching, service, research, and professional development. Instead, we need to imagine ourselves as intersectional academics where the scholarship of teaching, application, integration, and discovery overlap and inform each other. Similar to how as a Black Woman Engineering Professor, all of my identities intersect to bring my whole self to everything I do as opposed to trying to separate them into certain components for certain tasks. See Figure 1 for an illustration of this theory.

Schoarship Reconsidered
         Figure 1. Scholarship Reconsidered

Scholarship of teaching is used to educate and entice students to want to conduct further study or research to transmit, transform, and extend knowledge that they learn in class. Scholarship of application is when the research or professional development is applied to consequential problems or service to improve the world, typically these would be applications of the theory to real world problems that students observed in class. Scholarship of integration is used to make connections between disciplines such as how robotics is inherently multidisciplinary and illustrates how various disciplines can work together.

As an engineering and robotics professor, the way that I illustarated the scholarship reconsidered in my work is to use robotics for my service to the community to bring more diverse populations to engineering and bring engineering to more diverse populations. In my teaching, I illustrate multidisciplinary connections and also real world applications of controls, programming, artificial intelligence, electronics and sensings. I do this by using integral laboratory experiments, projects, and coding projects with a required software design plan. In my research, I recruit the undergraduate students from my robotics course to apply what they’ve learned to real-world problems and applications in the context of human-robot interaction, engineering education, robotics, education, and human-robot interfaces. See Figure 2 for an illustration of this concept..

Robotics For the Streets
       Figure 2. Robotics For the Streets: Service to Teaching to Research

This new vision for scholarship aligns well with this vision for an open source hardware trailblazer fellow. This is because it provides a new way to do research and professional development. It requires thinking of your work in terms of a holistic perspective that impacts all relevant stakeholders immediately.  Open source means it is publicly available to study, modify, distribute, make, and sell your designs or hardware as soon as all materials are available online. This helps to get your work to the community quicker. Through the access by more hands and eyes, there can be design improvements or corrections sooner which will improve the artifact as was as the impact. It will also expand the number of members of the community who will engage with and benefit from your work. There is a very real possibility that some of these individuals would have never seen this product if it was not open source.

Open source hardware allows you to make an impact much quicker than waiting for a patent, journal paper acceptance or conference presentation. This also keeps academics from singing to the choir by engaging new perspectives and audiences. This method also gives you the freedom to control your technology and share your knowledge or encourage commerce through the free and open exchange of designs. It recreates a wonderful way for academics to engage in all the elements of a professorship: service, teaching, research, professional development without having to envision them as a siloed approach where you must be concerned with being first to publish, present, patent.

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8/7/22 Video Blog: Scholarship Reconsidered