The Microsoft Kinect and Willow Garage's Robot Operating System (ROS) are changing the way robots are developed. Together, these tools can enable today's CS educators to provide richer and more research-representative experiences with robots and perception. This hands-on workshop will introduce ROS and showcase two pilot courses taught using ROS and the Kinect. Four 20-minute talks will intersperse with participants' hands-on development of Python programs on low-cost Kinect-equipped robots and the ARDrone quadcopter. This workshop is intended for all college-level CS educators interested in robotics or embodied AI. First-time ROS/Kinect users are particularly welcome! Laptops and robots will be provided. See http://www.ros.org/wiki/Courses/sigcse2012. Laptops optional.

This paper describes our efforts preparing a mobile manipulator for the 2011 AAAI Small Scale Manipulation Challenge. We describe our approach to building a low-cost mobile manipulator for human-scale environments using ROS and off-the-shelf sensory and servos.

A social robot is a robotic platform that supports natural interaction with people in a human-scale environment. Such a platform allows interesting opportunities for both traditional Computer Science students and students from other disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, design and communications. In this paper, we describe a new social robotic platform for educational uses that is equipped with a social face, arms for gesturing, advanced sensory, mobile base, and ROS integration. By using off-the-shelf and rapidly prototyped components, together with open source software, this platform is low-cost, easy to use, and easy to reproduce.