The twenty-first century is arguably the century of computing. In such a world saturated by computing, Computational Thinking is now recognized as a foundational competency for being an informed citizen and being successful in STEM work. Nevertheless, how to effectively import different types of teaching methods in university courses (lecture based learning, project based learning) is subjected to further evaluation. Currently, the arguments in favor of tangible robots including high interaction, great practicality, and specific operation results make themselves to be often used as a teaching medium and tool for teaching activities between teachers and students. Hence, in addition to cultivating students with computational thinking ability, this paper discussed how to integrate tangible robots into project-based learning courses of thinking skills training to improve the learning performance of the computational thinking ability. This study conducted in one semester on the 105 students from three classes. Experimental results show that the project-based learning method integrated with the teaching material of robotic visual programs approach had significantly better effectiveness in improving students' learning achievements than the traditional teaching method integrated with paper practice teaching materials approach. Analysis of the questionnaire results showed that the proposed learning approach did not increase the students' cognitive burden. In sum, the proposed approach helps students' learning achievement and cognitive load.

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This special issue consists of eight papers drawn from contributions at the 14th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics in 2014 (ISER'14). ISER is a series of biennial symposia that emphasizes experimental work with the goal of providing the robotics community with a forum for presenting research driven by creative ideas, bold visions, new systems, and novel applications of robotics. The ISER tradition fosters scholarly work that either addresses validation of theoretical paradigms through careful experimentation or contributes to the creation of novel experimental platforms that in turn inspire new theoretical developments. The Fourteenth Symposium was held on 15-18 June 2014 in Marrakech and Essaouira, Morocco. The program included technical papers reporting on new theoretical and experimental results, and two lively interactive presentation sessions. The technical sessions covered a broad spectrum of topics in experimental robotics: design, dynamics and control, perception, haptics, manipulation, mapping and localization, multi-robots, social robotics, rehabilitation and medical robotics, planning and perception, field robotics, marine robotics, sensing and navigation, and human-robot interaction. The program also included two interactive multimedia sessions. The papers in the special issue present exciting results in experimental robotics spanning a wide range of problem areas. Satzinger, Lau, Byl, and Byl present a practical solution to resolve kinematic redundancy for a dexterous, fourlimbed robot. The approach combines rapidly exploring random tree (RRT) searches over the degrees of freedom of one or two legs with heuristic solutions for inverse kinematics to constrain the positions of the remaining end effectors such that they remain on the ground during locomotion. Dexterity is quantified in terms of the additional feasible workspace reachable by the robot when body motion is allowed during a swing leg trajectory. The authors explore the planning time required and test the approach through experimental trials with RoboSimian. The result is agile and highly reliable walking on terrains designed for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). Hendrik, Mitchell, Herrell, and Webster describe a new robotic approach for laser prostate surgery. Different from