外文翻译--机器人技术使计算机科学更加贴近大众

西北工业大学明德学院本科毕业设计论文Robots Make Computer Science PersonalThey also make it more hands-on, real, practical, and immediate ,inspiring a new generation of scientists deep interest in the field.Computer science has lost its appeal, and robots can help find it. Even as computing has in vadedevery aspect of our lives, CS as a field of study is often seen as disconnected from these same lives. So to reestablish the connection,the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE, www.roboteduca-tion.org) is developing a personal robot, software,and curricula to help teach introductory CS courses. Imbued with the proper pedagogical philosophy and training, it can help make CS mor- epersonal.Who is to blame for the current lack of interest ? Well, me, for one. But CS education has long been a student repellent, along with what might be viewed as asocial industry practices and unfortunate Hollywood stereotypes. Though there are islands of hope (such as Carnegie Mellon University and the Georgia Institute of Technology), overall, fewer students are enrolling in CS courses, staying with them,or moving into industry because w e have was hed them out of the classroom and the pipeline. Then again, maybe the lack of interest simply reflects the state of the U.S. economy. But if you look at the numbers over the past 20 years, at least some invariants cant be explained away by economic booms and busts. Women and minorities have always been underrepresented in computing; their numbers in the U.S. peaked almost 25 y ears ago. Meanwhile, from 1998 to 2004 the enrollment of women in CS fell 80%, from about 1.5% to about 0.25%, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California,Los Angeles (www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/heri.html) 4. This trend is related to CSs reputation for being impersonal to all types of students, as reflected in the falling enrollment figures across the board, also according to the Higher Education Research Institute. Foll owing recent research in CS gender issues, we no w know much mor e about the weaknesses in CS education 2, most notably that students personal values are often at odds with the environment in CS classrooms. For example, long solitary hours in the laboratory obsessing over minute details is exactly the opposite of what many students are looking for. If CS educators would confront this reality and develop the pedagogical principles needed to fix it, w e could at least hope that the gr owing crisis in the CS pipeline might be ameliorated. Toward this end, my colleagues and I at IPRE have embarked on a multiyear project to create new introductory CS courses and textbooks designed to be accessible and inspiring to all students. The curricula are centered around a small personal robot (about the size of a paperback book) tentatively named Gyro being developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology (see the figure here). Our visions that each student would pur chase one for about$150 retail at their college bookstores, using them throughout their CS explorations. IPRE was initiated through a $1 million grant from Microsoft Research, announced in July 2006. At first glance, using robots may sound like a strange way to attract into CS those students who have traditionally been intimidated, excluded, or weeded-out of the field. One could imagine that robots would only exacerbate the problem rather than help alleviate it. However, CS is fundamentally about problem solving, and the example problems assigned to students in the classroom can profoundly influence ho w they perceive CS relevance and useful-ness. For example, an instructor who illustrates the topic of parsing with a com -piler example has lost an opportunity to connect CS with the rest of the everyday world. Exclusively using such incestuous examples is the equivalent of computer science for the computer scientist. We must provide motivation that is instantly appreciated and understood by all. Having an artifactin this case a robotprovides intrinsic motivation to both the instructor and the student to explore the science and engineering behind it. Students continue for reasons (such as fun, curiosity, and to show off to family and friends) that are very different from those traditionally identified. Consider a student who writes a program that produces the output 5 then later disco vers the correct output is 4. The instructor would likely attempt to motivate this students innate interest in the art and science of debugging. However , the goal of producing the correct answer motivates only some students, while others see it only as a way to please the instructor. Now consider an assignment that requires students to write a pro-gram to create a dancing robot. The notion of correct answers is thrown out the window. In addition, the instructor doesnt have to artificially motivate debugging because the students generate their own motivation. They initiate the debugging conversation, eager to understand and fix a program not because it is perceived by the instructor as wrong but because the robot doesnt do what they want it to do. Projects like robot dancing represent a more natural learning environment, focusing on the creative not the merely correct. Our embrace of the personal robot in the class-room is built on the shoulders of creative giants,including: Karel. In the form of an ASCII character or toy-like robot only a few pixels tall, it moves through at grid world picking up and dropping off beepers3; Alice. Controlling beautifully rendered characters(such as chickens, snowmen, and ovens), it allows students to create animated stories(www.alice.org); and Lego Mindstor ms. These build-it-yourself robots are packaged as a kit (). Our vision of a personal robot in the classroom adds to the conversation. It will emerge from its box, perhaps in the form of an egg or small creature rolling around on its own wheels, immediately usable by students for writing simple control programs or for instant messaging other robots and using the IMs to allow them to coordinate their robots behaviors. They will operate in the real-world environment of walls and gravity, a place quite different from Karels beeper-tagged grid world. In addition, the software, called Myro, we are developing for controlling robot movements, reactions, and environmental sensing can be used in real robotics research projects. (Myro is implemented in Iron-Python and C# running on .NET and Mono, the open sour ce- implementation of .NET .) It will help students progress fr om introductory coursework to more advanced concepts (such as data structures and object-oriented programming). It will be able to control a variety of simulated, educational, and commercial robots, including Mobile Rs Pioneer, iRs Roomba, and Lego Mindstorms. It will enhance students understanding of what it means for software to perform within and despite the constraints and opportunities of the physical world, helping bring a sense of authenticity to the class-room, for which there is no substitute. Guided by the philosophical principle of pedagogical scalability, IPRE looks for tools that are simple to understand and use immediately yet provide strong . One such tool is the language Python, which is intuitive, powerful, and easy to learn (www.python.org) 1. We have been exploring its use in CS education for several years. We now hope to develop and identify a library beyond Myro, Gyro, and Python of pedagogically scalable hardware, software, and course ware tools for teaching CS. Robots are no silver bullet for overcoming the current difficulty attracting and keeping students. But they can be used in combination with other ideas to create a mor e meaningful, accessible, interesting, intellectually challenging medium for teaching. We hope that they, along with personal open-ended assignments and a scalable pedagogical framework, will help attract, inspire, prepare, and keep a large and diverse group of students. Our aim is for them to find CS more satisfying, as well as a great place to refine their computational thinking, creativity , and career ambitions. We begin testing these ideas in the classroom in the spring of 2007 at both Bryn Mawr College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, then explore the possibilities over the following three years. If all goes well, perhaps these personal robots will help CS regain the universal appeal it once had.6译文：机器人技术使计算机科学更加贴近大众机器人技术同时也使计算机科学更加实用、真切，更富于操作性和动作的迅捷。计算机科学已经失去了往日的感染力，然而机器人技术可以帮助它找回往日的辉煌。计算机似乎已经侵占了我们生活的方方面面，但是机器人技术的研究似乎还处于若即若离的状态。所以，为了重建两者之间的联系，个人教育机器人研究院正在研制一款个人使用的机器人，包括机器人本身、软件、课程等。这些均将用于帮助人们学习初步的计算机课程。课程融入了合适的教学哲学，使计算机的学习更加个人化。谁应该为现在没有意思的计算机课程负责？好吧，我，还是其他什么人。计算机科学的教育一直被认为是“学生的噩梦”，同样被看做已经不幸地成为老一套的好莱坞模式。虽然还有一些迹象表明计算机科学还是很不错的学科，但是，从整体来说，更少的学生进入计算机领域，因为我们已经把他移出了我们的课程。更进一步的说，很有可能，计算机科学缺乏魅力恰好反映了美国当前的经济状态。但是，如果你有看过过去二十年的数据，就会发现至少一些不变量通过经济的繁荣和增长是不能解释的。妇女和少数民族在计算机领域长期一来一直没有足够的代表。在过去的二十五年里，他们的数量一直领先。同时，根据位于洛杉矶的加利福尼亚大学高等教育研究中心的调查结果显示，从1998年到2004年，计算机领域的妇女招收人数下降了百分之八十，从原来所占比例百分之一点五，到现在的百分之零点二五。这一趋势和计算机科学在所有的学生中备受冷遇有关，这可以从持续下降的招收图表中可以看到，同时也可以从高等教育研究中心看到。跟随最近的一项关于计算机科学的属性问题的研究，我们可以知道更多计算机科学在教学方面的弱点，更加明显地发现，对于教学的环境，学生们各执一词。例如：长期单独一个人在实验室，纠缠于大量细微末节的东西，和许多学生的追求是大相径庭的。如果计算机科学的教学能够坦然面对这一事实，发展可以修复这一缺陷的教学理论，那么我们至少可以希望这一局面能够慢慢得以改善。最后，我和我在个人教育机器人研究院的同事们开始从事一项为期多年的工程，这项工程旨在编写出新的计算机科学课程导论和相应的教科书，使这门科学能够更容易被人接受，从而激发所有的学生。课程的核心围绕一个小的私人机器人，大约就一本平装书那么大，我们暂时把它命名为“陀螺”，我们希望每个同学都能花上一百五十美元在他们大学的书店里买到这个小机器人，并且使用它完成自己的计算机科学之旅。个人教育机器人研究院已经接受了来自微软研究中心的一百万的补助金。发表于2006年6月。首先，将机器人用于计算机科学的教学中听起来似乎很奇怪。学计算机的学生在提起计算机的学习时，只会感到恐怖。有些人会想到，机器人的应用只会使这一问题更加严重，而不是缓和矛盾。然而，计算机科学教学所存在问题的解决是刻不容缓的，刻意给学生分配的老套的例题，会严重影响到学生对计算机科学的理解和应用。比如：一个老师使用汇编语言来阐明一个概念时，其本身已经切断了计算机科学和生活的联系。专门使用那些没有血肉的教学例子就好像计算机科学家在学计算机。我们必须提供足够的吸引力，以推动学生能理解和欣赏这门科学。有了这件工艺品一个机器人，它为教师和学生提供了内在的学习动力，激发他们去探索计算机背后的科学。到那个时候，学生们坚持学习计算机的原因将会多种多样，因为兴趣、好奇心、或者是想在家人和朋友面前炫耀一下。设想一下一个学生写了一个程序，运行结果是五，但随后他发现正确答案应该是四。看到这个，老师的反映可能是试图去激发学生在排查故障上边的兴趣。然而，对排除故障得到正确答案的学生只是少部分，而其他学生把这一过程只是看做取悦老师的方式而已。现在，考虑这样一个任务，要求学生写一个能让机器人跳舞的程序。正确答案已经一目了然了。另外，教师们不需要人为地激发学生去排查故障，因为学生已经自然而然地在寻找了。他们排查故障，努力修复程序，不是因为老师说这是错误的，而是机器人没有做出他们指挥的动作。像“跳舞的机器人”这样的题目，呈现了一个自然而然的学习环境，激发学生的创造力，而不是仅仅让学生寻找一个正确的答案。在创造课堂私人机器人的过程中，我们得到了很多具有创造力的卓越人才的支持，包括：卡雷尔，艾丽丝，垒高拼装玩具商。我们期望在课堂上使用的私人机器人能够增加交流功能，而且更加人性化。没准它能像破壳的小鸡一样从盒子里边钻出来，还能像小生物一样用脚走路。最重要的它能够协助同学们完成简单的控制程序，或者和别的机器人进行即时通讯，同时，使用感应电动机调节他们的动作。这样的机器人是可以在真实环境中操作的。另外，软件迈罗，我们研制它将用于控制机器人的动作、反映和环境的感知，其实，它也可以用于机器人的研制项目中。它可以帮助学生从传统的引导式教学走向更加先进的教育理念。它可以控制各种各样仿生型、教育型、商业型机器人。它可以增强学生对软件的理解能力。因为没有替代产品，所以机器人会给学生带来更强的权威性。在“教学的可扩展性”哲学原理的指导下，个人教育机器人研究院正在研制这样的工具，它以学长的身份呈现在学生面前，易于好理解，使用起来可以提供强大的教学平台。一个名叫派森的语言学习工具就是其中之一，我们在计算机科学教育平台上开发它已经多年了。现在我们想开发一种无论是从软件还是硬件方面，均超越迈罗、陀螺、和派森的电子图书馆，用于计算机科学的教学。机器人没有什么特别的高新技术以解决现在保留和吸引学生的难题。但是可以通过和其它思想的交融，创造出一个更加有趣、贴近生活、智力上富于挑战性的教学模式。我们希望，通过使用较为灵活的学习任务和可升级的教学构架，能够激发和吸引更多的学生学习计算机科学，从而保持一定数量的学生群体。我们的目标是然他们发现学习计算机科学的乐趣，同时也是更大程度的提炼他们的计算思想、创造力和事业上的博大雄心。我们开始测试这一观点是在2007年的春天，同时在布林莫尔学院 和 乔治亚理工学院，在随后的三年里，考究了这一计划实施的可能性。如果一切进展顺利的话，没准机器人能帮助计算机科学这门课程重回当年的雄风。