This innovative practice WIP paper presents a pilot study of an educational intervention designed to transform the way students view and overcome struggles that are a normal-and essential-part of the learning process. The intervention involves sharing “relatable rebound stories” from previous students, each describing a setback or challenge encountered and the specific agentic strategies used to resolve it. Preliminary results are presented from a pilot study conducted in an entry-level computer engineering course of 168 students that requires time management and project-based learning. This study shows the positive impact of this intervention on quantitative sense of belonging and selfefficacy scales and confidence in skills related to computing, systems prototyping, and problem-solving.

Autonomous outdoor navigation requires the ability to discriminate among different types of terrain. A non-trivial problem is to manage the robot’s speed based on terrain roughness. This paper presents a speed control system for a robotic platform traveling over natural terrain. This system is based on the view of a line-scanning laser of the area just in front of the platform. Analysis of range data for roughness produced by the laser over different terrains is examined. An algorithm for managing speed through different terrain has been tested on real outdoor surfaces producing excellent performance.