Teaching Introductory Robotics Programming: Learning to Program with National Instruments' LabVIEW

This article considers strategies for teaching beginning students how to program mobile robots for autonomous operation. Many high school and beginning undergraduate students desire to learn about robotics, but they may lack the required knowledge. Experiences from an undergraduate course are described to illustrate the robot, its programming environment, software design, and algorithms, which faculty can use to guide beginning students from a place of no prior experience to writing impressive, autonomous mobile-robot programs. Autonomous algorithms that perform well and are appropriate for beginning students, including a new wall-following algorithm, are reviewed.