Legos are not a common sight on a college campus. Some UW students, although, are getting a chance to work with the toys that are usually reserved for kids.

In Art 483: Fundamentals of Interface Design, students get an interdisciplinary exposure to building robots and get to work with Legos in the process.

Co-taught by Andrew Davidson and Axel Roesler, the class includes students, graduate as well as undergraduate, from programs such as Art Design, Computer Science and Engineering, and the DX Arts Program, said Davidson.

The class begins by laying a common framework from which all students work, including terminology and activities that teach design fundamentals and encourage students to think in systems.

"In one activity, we had four students lassoed together to act as a robot," Davidson said. "One student functioned as the eyes, another as the sensor with their hands, and the other two served as the motor. They each only did their function. There they learned that robots aren't smart."

From there, students work with the Lego Mindstorms construction kits. Mindstorms combines the simple building blocks with a mini-microprocessor, various motors, sensors and a visual programming language.

Everyone who buys a kit starts out with the same supplies, just like a box of Legos. The difference in outcome is what the robot is programmed to do.

Yet, it is simple enough to program in 30 minutes even if you have little programming experience, according to Lego's Web site.

Additionally, it is compatible with computers and in some cases with phones, making it portable.

Davidson studied computer science and worked professionally as a project manager before coming to teach at the UW 10 years ago.

"Interdisciplinary teaching is cool," he said. "It's great to bring together knowledge of different fields ... that's what happens in the real world. We mix up the students so they work with someone from a different discipline."

Before embarking on large-scale projects, students work in partners to create robots that can do simple tasks.

For example, student Lauren Miles developed a "living dog" that follows the program she wrote.

"When someone gets too close, he begins to bark," Miles said. "And when I tell him to follow the black line on the paper, he does. He also stops if he bumps into something."

Luke Woods, another student in the class, said he has worked with three people in about three weeks and has learned a lot from them.

"The first was a student from the DX program, and he wanted to explore everything we could do with the robot," Woods said. "Then I worked with a graduate student in programming, who wanted to see how this can be used to help beginning students in programming."

The class also gets an opportunity to work in groups in designing robots.

"The second half of the class is reserved for large team projects, where students design systems of robots working together," Davidson said. "They propose different tasks where the robots work together and the class votes on projects to pursue."

The course is still in the beginning stages and could be growing, Davidson said.

"Though the course is currently only offered once a year, it may grow in the future," he said. "It was originally intended for design students only, but we opened it up to get students from different disciplines to work together in the real world. We provide the technology, they provide the projects and teamwork."

Reach reporter Chris Paredes at news@thedaily.washington.edu