The AUSS FIREfly: A Distributed Sensing and Coordination Platform for First-Year Engineering Education

This paper describes an embedded computing and sensing system developed to serve the needs of the Autonomous Unmanned Systems Stream (AUSS), a two-semester sequence at the University of Maryland that provides first-year students with an inquiry-based introduction to concepts in engineering and autonomy. AUSS is part of the UMD First-year Innovation and Research Experience program (FIRE), a campus-wide initiative that provides course-based undergraduate research experiences for first-year students. FIRE aims to propel students towards planning, conducting and reporting research that is relevant to the scientific community. To serve its educational mission, the AUSS needs to equip incoming freshmen with the necessary technical capabilities to pursue engineering research in autonomous systems. The AUSS FIREfly is a robotics kit designed to be a training tool and a research platform. Each device is assembled and programmed by an individual student, exposing the builder to topics such as circuit design, information theory, and computer science. Once completed, the FIREfly uses onboard infrared transceivers to emulate the photic system of a firefly, supporting group-led experiments in multi-agent synchronization. The devices are also designed to serve as nodes in a distributed sensor network when equipped with additional measurement modules such as airspeed probes. This paper presents the design features of the AUSS FIREfly system within the context of the challenges faced by a first-year research education experience. It presents student experience evaluations from the first cohort of AUSS students and describes two FIREfly student projects as case studies.