Artbotics
Students in the Artbotics program learn how to create art pieces that incorporate sensors and motors, resulting in exhibits that interact with their viewers. For example, in the PapaROBOTzzi exhibit, students built large faces, ranging from an alien to a robot to representations of the students themselves. When a visitor to the gallery aimed a flashlight’s beam at one of the pieces, it reacted using a program written by its student creator.
The balance of art and computer science attracts a wider audience of students than a traditional computer science course, including much higher percentages of underrepresented groups. The materials have been used for an undergraduate course, an after school program for high school students, and a summer camp for middle school students.
In June 2009, twenty educators participated in a two-day workshop to learn how to replicate Artbotics at their institutions. Each participant learned how to use the Super Cricket, analog and digital sensors, DC motors and servo motors by building their own art projects. The majority of the workshop included educators from the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, who are adapting Artbotics for use this summer in a camp for high school girls.
Artbotics is a collaboration between the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Revolving Museum, both located in Lowell, Massachusetts. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Google. More information on Artbotics can be found at http://www.artbotics.org.
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