ABSTRACT
We explore the challenges of teaching "hardware-embedded Robotic Operating System (ROS) skills" online in a lockdown situation to participants through a hands-on competition. Teamwork is a vital skill in solving modern engineering problems. During Covid-19 lockdown situations, the interaction between teammates significantly reduced compared to regular times. This prompted us to design an engineering problem statement with scaffolding that improves engineering education learning efficacy. A total of 465 teams (1860 participants) were introduced to a problem statement comprising of a autonomous robot navigation, manipulation and a perception task for an indoor unmanned ground vehicle. We study the performance of teams based on several factors such as participant's score, task's difficulty level, number of resources given and the nature of online sessions by instructors. We found the scaffolding approach helped teams in implementing a solution by exploring alternative methods and thus their knowledge. © ISLS.