Lecture

Finite State Machines: Sensing and Reacting with Thymio

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Description

This lecture explores the different modes of Thymio, a robot that uses proximity sensors to perceive and react to its environment. The instructor demonstrates how Thymio behaves in yellow, green, red, and dark blue modes, showcasing its ability to avoid obstacles, communicate with other robots, and sense its position in space. By using a microphone, Thymio can also react to external sounds, transitioning between states based on the number of claps. The lecture illustrates how Thymio functions as a finite state machine, capable of performing various actions based on different inputs.

In MOOC

The Thymio robot as a tool for discovering digital science

This course is intended for anyone who wants to master the Thymio educational robot, but it is especially designed for primary and secondary school teachers who want to learn about this tool and use it in the classroom. It allows teachers to acquire the basics of computer science and robotics, by proposing adapted problem situations, and by providing pedagogical tracks for the animation in class. It responds to the new programs for the introduction of digital sciences in schools in France and Switzerland an

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Quiz

Ontological neighbourhood

Mechanical engineering

Robotics: Topics in robotics

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Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of electronics and communication, computer science and engineering. Robotics involves the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrates fields of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information engineering, mechatronics engineering, electronics, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, control systems engineering, software engineering, mathematics, etc.

Robot

A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to evoke human form, but most robots are task-performing machines, designed with an emphasis on stark functionality, rather than expressive aesthetics.

Autonomous robot

An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.

Robotic sensing

Robotic sensing is a subarea of robotics science intended to provide sensing capabilities to robots. Robotic sensing provides robots with the ability to sense their environments and is typically used as feedback to enable robots to adjust their behavior based on sensed input. Robot sensing includes the ability to see, touch, hear and move and associated algorithms to process and make use of environmental feedback and sensory data.

Swarm robotics

Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. ′′In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act.′′ It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment.

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