Collaborative mobile robot design in an introductory programming course for engineers

A project-centered introductory computer course for freshman and sophomore engineers has been developed at the Penn State Abington College. Students form teams to collaboratively design and implement algorithms in the C language for autonomous mobile robots. The team projects have been developed to 'teach' critical programming concepts. These team projects have largely replaced the traditional lecture portion of the course. Collaborative software design for mobile robots provides direct, visual feedback of algorithms and has enhanced the learning process in the computer science course.