ASU VIPLE in Computing and Engineering Curricula

Yinong Chen and Gennaro De Luca

This website is authored by Dr. Yinong Chen and Dr. Gennaro De Luca, and VIPLE is first released in 2015.
ASU VIPLE is a workflow-based Visual IoT/Robotics Programming Language Environment developed at Arizona State University, in the IoT and Robotics Education Laboratory. VIPLE is initially based on the functional definition of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) and (Visual Programming Language (VPL), and it extends their functionalities to include many more educational functions. Microsoft discontinued the development and support to its MRDS and VPL in 2012. ASU VIPLE is developed to support MRDS and VPL community, so that they can continue to program their robots in the same way. ASU VIPLE has open APIs and interface. It supports a variety of IoT and robotics platforms, including EV3 and open platform IoT systems and robots, such as robots based on Intel and ARM architecture. ASU VIPLE works in the same way as MRDS and VPL. The VIPLE program runs on a backend PC, and receives sensor and motor feedback, and sends commands to the robot motors. ASU VIPLE supports both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections between the PC and the robots. The data transferred between the PC and the IoT/robot are packed into JSON objects.

The following diagrams show the platforms supported by VIPLE and two example programs: A counter program and a EV3 robot control program.



The basic functions of ASU VIPLE can be taught to high school students and college freshman students in their computational thinking and first introduction to engineering course. The advanced features, such as service-oriented computing, parallel computing, machine-learning and AI programming, autonomous driving experiments, and Pi Calculus expressions, can be used in advanced computing classes. This site includes documents, downloads, sample code, video, lecture slides, and other resources. For more information, please contact Dr. Yinong Chen at yinong@asu.edu