CMU's Fostering Innovation through Robotics Exploration program sponsored by DARPA
Carnegie Mellon University is launching a four-year, $7 million effort to encourage middle and high school students with an interest in robotics to major in computer science and pursue careers in the field.
The Fostering Innovation through Robotics Exploration (FIRE) program is sponsored by DARPA, which on a related front is looking for computer science researchers to develop systems for the U.S. military.
Top U.S. computer science programs have been seeing a rise in enrollment, though there has been an overall decline in students entering the field. FIRE will develop programming and other tools that build upon young students’ interest in robotics to step them into other computer science related areas. The program will target existing robotic competitions but also create new ones.
“The idea is that these programs must be rigorous, but fun – what we call ‘hard fun,'” said Robin Shoop, director of FIRE and of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy for developing K-12 robotics curriculum, in a statement. “Robots provide a great teaching tool. Kids like robots and are innately curious about how they work and how they make decisions. Finding answers to their questions is fun, but technically challenging, and that makes robotics uniquely suited to teaching students computer science, engineering and mathematics.”
