Roomba Pac-Man: Teaching Autonomous Robotics through Embodied Gaming

We present an approach to teaching autonomous robotics to upper-level undergraduates through the medium of embodied games. As part of a develop- ing course at Brown University, we have created the Roomba Pac-Man task to introduce students to differ- ent approaches to autonomous robot control in the con- text of a specific task. Roomba Pac-Man has been de- veloped using commodity hardware from which stu- dents explore standard methods in robotics, namely sub- sumption, localization, and path planning. Our develop- ment of Roomba Pac-Man is founded upon grounding robotics in a compelling and accessible application in a non-contrived real-world environment in a manner than can be reproduced, giving students a sense of owner- ship.