On Jan. 1, Winston-Salem State University became part of a robotics alliance.
“Robotics is the science of technology of robots; their design, manufacturing and application,” said Dr. Elva Jones, professor and chair of the Computer Science Department. The area requires a working understanding of electronics, mechanics and software, and is usually accompanied by knowledge of other subjects. Popular examples of robots may be found in the entertainment (the movie “Star Wars” R2/D2), healthcare (robotic surgery), and manufacturing (tobacco and auto plants use robot transport devices and assembly lines) industries.
The Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact (ARTSI) alliance is a unified education/research project focused on robotics for healthcare, the arts, and entrepreneurship. According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), only 4.8 percent of approximately 2 million computer and information scientists in the United States are African-American. The ARTSI alliance will offer multiple opportunities such as research activities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), national outreach programs through a Web portal, and an annual student research conference and workshop. Spelman College is the leader of this alliance.
Dr. Elva Jones, professor and chair of the Computer Science Department, and Dr. Rebecca Caldwell, assistant professor of computer science, are the leaders of the WSSU project. Hampton University, Morgan State University, Florida A&M, Norfolk State University, and the universities of Arkansas-Pine Bluff and the District of Columbia are also involved in the ARTSI alliance.
Jones said, the ARTSI alliance will benefit WSSU by broadening the participation of faculty and students in robotics research and application. Long-term benefits include the expansion of current research in the area of robotics in computer science education, exposing more undergraduate students to professional research and potential industry partnerships.
When asked how this ARTSI robotics alliance will directly affect student life, Jones said the project will produce many opportunities for WSSU.
“Students will receive financial support for engaging in research with faculty,” she said. “They will have the opportunity to ‘give back’ to the community by participating in our community outreach initiative with the community groups, tutorial programs and recreation centers.”
In addition, she said the same concepts taught in the classroom will be explained in a manner more fun and rewarding to students, ultimately helping to develop more skilled programmers.
“Students who program robots are exposed to a variety of learning methods that include active (doing), sensing (factual learning), visual (seeing), and sequential (step-by-step) methods. The immediate feedback received by students actually motivates them to explore the topic at a deeper level,” Jones said.
WSSU became involved in the ARTSI alliance as a result of several years of collaboration by Jones and Caldwell in the area of high-performance computing in education. Initially funded by Jones’ NASA and Title III grants to improve student performance in assembler programming, the pair formed a small student research group, added a robotics unit to the assembler programming class, and entered competitions with various HBCUs. During these competitions, faculty members from several HBCUs and research institutions began talking about expanding the collaborative project. This vision became reality when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the project.
“WSSU’s plans for the alliance are to meet the goals set for ARTSI,” Jones said. “
These mainly involve increasing the number of African-Americans who study computer science and robotics in college including encouraging them to seek advanced training in graduate school, increase the number of HBCU faculty members who will educate and involve students in robotics research, and recruit students from grades K-12 to pursue education in computer science and robotics.”