Language engineering in the context of a popular, inexpensive robot platform

摘要

Language engineering - the theory and practice of building language processors and compilers, has long been recognized as important subject in Computer Science curricula. However, due to lack of suitable target systems, educators face significant challenges to teach language engineering classes effectively.

Leveraging the emerging inexpensive robot devices, this paper presents a new approach of using robots as system context to teach language engineering topics. We designed the Chirp-Scribbler Language, which targets the popular Scribbler robot; combined together, they provide an engaging and feature-rich platform to teach a wide range of topics in language engineering.

This paper describes the Chirp-Scribbler Language, its integration with the target robot, and the teaching practice of using them to teach language translation basics in an undergraduate programming course.