Computer Science 4163/5163: Embedded Systems (Spring 2009)
Presidential Dream Course: Sm[Art] Spaces

Instructors: Adam Brown (Art) and Andrew H. Fagg (Computer Science)

Tuesday/Thursday 1:30-2:45

The Sm[Art] Spaces course will bridge the perceived traditional boundaries that divide the sciences and engineering from arts and humanities. Bringing together students from computer science, engineering, and the arts, this course will explore theories of mind and body utilizing a range of perspectives, including artificial intelligence, art, neuroscience, robotics, spirituality and psychology. Expert guest speakers will help to facilitate this investigation by creating a stimulating backdrop. The fine arts model will be used as a "test bed" of creative exploration to learn about the use of embedded computing devices/electronics in our environment. In particular, we will learn the fundamentals of designing, constructing and programming embedded devices and explore the technological, social, spiritual and artistic implications of distributing such interactive devices throughout our environments. Through this collaborative effort, we will investigate new paradigms of creative practice that will be manifested in a set of interdisciplinary group projects.

Guest Speakers

Dr. Linda Smith is a Chancellors' Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Cognitive Science at Indiana University at Bloomington, and is the director of the Cognitive Development Laboratory. Smith earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of more than 100 publications on cognitive and linguistic development in young children. With Esther Thelen, she co-authored the books A Dynamic Systems Approach to Development (Smith & Thelen 1993) and A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action (Smith & Thelen 1994), which look at development from a dynamic systems perspective. In 1997, she received the Tracy Sonneborn Award, Indiana University's highest award to its faculty. In 2007, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Smith is also a member of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.

Talk: "Grounding toddler learning in sensory-motor dynamics"

Monday, March 9, 2009, 4:00 - 5:30pm, Stephenson Research and Technology Center


(joint work with Dr. Chen Yu)

Ken Feingold has been exhibiting his work in film, video, objects, and installations since 1974. After first studying at Antioch College (Yellow Springs, Ohio) he received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in Post-Studio Art from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Valencia, CA. Among the numerous awards and honors Feingold has received, the including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2004) and a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship (2003). He has taught at Princeton University and Cooper Union, among others. His work If / Then (2001) was included in the Whitney Biennial 2002, and three of his installations were in the Corcoran Biennial 2002. Self Portrait as the Center of the Universe (1998 - 2001) was shown at Tate Liverpool in Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance (2004), and a "mid-career survey" of his work was shown at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles between October 2005 and February 2006. His works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (Film Study Collection) NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kiasma, Helsinki; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and others. He has traveled widely, living for extended periods of time in India, Japan, and Argentina and working for shorter periods in many other countries. He lives in New York City.

Talk: Thursday, March 26, 4:00 - 5:30pm, Fred Jones Museum

Illah Nourbakhsh is an Associate Professor of Robotics and head of the Robotics Masters Program in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 1996. He is co-founder of the Toy Robots Initiative at The Robotics Institute, director of the Center for Innovative Robotics and director of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) lab. He is also co-PI of the Global Connection Project, home of the Gigapan project. He is also co-PI of the Robot 250 city-wide art+robotics fusion program in Pittsburgh. He is director of education for the NSF-funded ERC, Quality of Life Technologies. His current research projects include educational and social robotics and community robotics. His past research has included protein structure prediction under the GENOME project, software reuse, interleaving planning and execution and planning and scheduling algorithms, as well as mobile robot navigation. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory he was a member of the New Millenium Rapid Prototyping Team for the design of autonomous spacecraft. He is a founder and chief scientist of Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc., which was acquired by Witness Systems, Inc. Illah recently co-authored the MIT Press textbook, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots.

Talk: "Humanity in Robotics"

Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 4:00 - 5:30pm, Stephenson Research and Technology Center

Sri Dharma Mittra has spent most of his life in service to humanity, disseminating the ancient knowledge of how to achieve radiant health and spiritual development. Dharma was born in the late 1930s and has studied yoga since 1958. After meeting his teacher guru, Sri Swami Kalaishananda, he immersed himself in intense study and practice of the classical eight limbs of yoga and nine years of dedicated full-time practice of karma yoga. He was accepted and initiated as a sannyasi, one who renounces the world in order to realize God. During these years Dharma had the esteemed honor of being the personal assistant to the Guru attending to all his needs. Sri Swami Kailashanada is known as the first Guru to bring the practice of live-food Yoga Diet, Zone Therapy, and hatha yoga to the West in the early 1950s.

Talk: "The Purpose of Yoga"

Thursday, April 23, 4:00 - 5:30pm, Stephenson Research and Technology Center (Note change of location)


Computer Science 4163/5163 Details

Approximately half of the class periods will be held in combination with Adam Brown's How to Build Robots for Artists course (Art 4813). We will use these periods to discuss topics from artificial intelligence, art, neuroscience, robotics, spirituality and psychology, and to design and implement our group project.

The remaining class periods will be dedicated to discussing embedded systems within a computer science context. Topics will include:

Where: Bizzell Library 104

Prerequisites: Computer Organization (CS 2613 or equivalent), Operating Systems (CS 3113 or equivalent), Linear Algebra (Mathematics 3333 or equivalent)

Texts:

Links:


fagg cs ou edu

Last modified: Wed Feb 11 00:31:49 2009