Using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and LEJOS in an Advanced Software Engineering Course

Author

Lew, Michael W. ; Horton, Thomas B. ; Sherriff, Mark S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

fYear

2010

fDate

9-12 March 2010

Firstpage

121

Lastpage

128

Abstract

This paper describes the benefits of using LeJOS and the Lego Mindstorms NXT set for teaching advanced software development. While Lego Mindstorms has been used in introduction to computer science courses, it is not reported to be widely used in a simulated production environment requiring such things as threading, network communications, and the implementation of command protocols. Additionally, because the Mindstorms NXT system supports Bluetooth communications with multiple devices, it is possible to use this system as the basis for a complex, communicating system requiring multiple software artifacts on different machines.

Keywords

computer science education; engineering education; software engineering; LeJOS; Lego Mindstorms NXT; advanced software engineering course; command protocols; computer science courses; multiple software artifacts; network communications; simulated production environment; threading; Bluetooth; Communication system software; Computational modeling; Computer science; Computer simulation; Education; Production; Programming; Protocols; Software engineering;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T), 2010 23rd IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Pittsburgh, PA

ISSN

1093-0175

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-7052-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CSEET.2010.31

Filename

5463581