...The Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact Alliance, which is funded by a three-year, $2-million grant from the National Science Foundation, connects historically black colleges and research institutions to foster collaboration. The alliance includes Brown and 15 other institutions, as well as several corporate partners, among them Microsoft and Apple, according to its Web site...

...Chad Jenkins, assistant professor of computer science, is heading the alliance at Brown. According to Jenkins, the alliance hopes to provide channels for students from historically black colleges and universities to do research at places like Brown...

...Through the alliance, Jenkins is already planning to take on interns for this summer to work with the Brown Robotics Group. This student research group, led by Jenkins, studies human-robot interaction and robot learning, he said. The interns will be from participating historically black universities and will be matched to Brown by their schools' advisers.

Along with engaging interested students in advanced robot research, Jenkins said he hopes to work on making low-cost robot platforms available to anyone. For him and his team, this means creating programs and equipment that are both easy to use and affordable...

Full Story: Bringing humans into CS, by way of robots Source: Brown Daily Herald, February 14th, 2008 Author: Anne Deggelman Added on February 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am, by Judy He