ABSTRACT
Educational robots allow students deepen their knowledge of mathematics and scientific concepts. Educational Robotic coding clubs provide a learning environment for K-6 students that promotes coding through STEM digital literacy. Students in educationally disadvantaged families may not have the educational and financial capital to engage in STEM learning. Closures of schools and afterschool services during the COVID-19 pandemic increased this digital divide. This research proposes a framework for delivering a virtual robotic coding club in an educationally disadvantaged community. The framework develops young people's emotional engagement in STEM through robotic coding. Synchronous online classes were delivered into family homes using Zoom. Results demonstrate that children achieved emotional engagement as reported through high levels of enjoyment and increased interest after participating in the programme. The research shows promise in increasing children's STEM skills and knowledge, and in improving positive attitudes towards STEM for children and parents. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In the previous study the work experience on organization of teaching Robotics to secondary school students at school lessons and in study groups was introduced. This study which was conducted within 2019 and 2021 covered the period of distant learning caused by COVID-19 pandemic and even post-pandemic period, when a part of school students continued learning online. The study deals with the problem of developing school students' computational thinking in online learning. We consider computational thinking as a set of cognitive skills of solving educational and cognitive problems. The research questions raised were aimed at solving the problem of the influence of Educational Robotics on developing computational thinking. During the research we have found out that due to the adaptability of robots, Educational Robotics, the development of individual learning programs, and the arrangement of collaborative online learning are instruments and a solution to the problem of developing computational thinking. The main components of computational thinking, which were studied within those 3 years, are the following: algorithmic thinking, ability to program, and efficiency in team work. The influence of the learning strategy we chose enabled us to determine the level of computational thinking and its dependence on learning Robotics. We used statistical criteria in order to summarize the results of our research. The statistics provided suggests progress in the indicator tracked. Based on the experimental data received we approximated reliability (R2) and relevant exponential equation (trend lines). The research we carried out also has led to the general conclusion that Educational Robotics helps to create synergistic learning environment for stimulating students' motivation, collaboration, self-efficacy and creativity.
ABSTRACT
The proper integration of technology in teaching and learning processes must consider the role of teachers and students, as well as the design of tasks and the context in which they are implemented. Teachers' perceived self-efficacy significantly influences their willingness to integrate educational robotics (ER) into their practice, so initial teacher training should provide opportunities for teachers to participate in structured activities that integrate ER. In this study, a class of pre-service teachers from an initial teacher training programme were provided with their first contact with an ER platform through the use of a simulator. We present the design process of a student exploration guide and teacher guide, developed over three iterative cycles of implementation, assessment and redesign. The analysis of the data collected allowed for improvements in the design of the tasks, the graphic component of the student exploration guide, and more precise indications for the teacher's actions. The main contribution of this study is the chain orchestration between the simulator, student exploration guide and teacher guide, which allowed pre-service teachers to solve a set of challenges of increasing complexity, thereby progressively decreasing their difficulties and contributing to an adequate integration of ER in their future teaching practices.
ABSTRACT
This study represents an important step to bring innovative teaching practices to schools. The study underlines the effects on increasing the students' interest in STEM, self-efficacy and STEM career decisions with educational robotics activities. The implementation of robotics equipment in activities is not the only factor that influences the students' STEM career decisions. Other factors are the didactical design in various settings or the use of different robotics equipment. The study evaluated data from app. 1500 students with questionnaires before and after the activities and identified the different effects on students' STEM interest and their self-efficacy. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented the implementation of on-site activities in schools for a longer period, also online workshops using simulations were carried out and evaluated. Besides, a specific case study was analyzed that applied an innovative hybrid setting with 23 students at a business school in Vienna, Austria. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The experimental component is an essential method in Engineering education. Sometimes the availability of laboratories and components is compromised, and the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the situation. Resorting to an accurate simulation seems to help this process by allowing students to develop the work, program, test, and validate it. Moreover, it lowers the development time and cost of the prototyping stages of a robotics project. As a multidisciplinary area, robotics requires simulation environments with essential characteristics, such as dynamics, connection to hardware (embedded systems), and other applications. Thus, this paper presents the Simulation environment of SimTwo, emphasizing previous publications with models of sensors, actuators, and simulation scenes. The simulator can be used for free, and the source code is available to the community. Proposed scenes and examples can inspire the development of other simulation scenes to be used in electrical and mechanical Engineering projects. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Simulators in robotics are well-known tools for the development of new applications and training and integration of systems for remote operation or supervision. Therefore, robotics is one of the most used practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-based educational frameworks, and, with COVID-19, simulators have become increasingly important. This study shows specific benefits achieved for K-12 students in an individualized family service plan/resource teachers for the gifted model based on a review. A simulator is typically adopted for undergraduates students to increase their ability to make technical-based decisions and move smoothly between the real and virtual worlds, with a strong emphasis on the feedback from both. It enables students to develop abilities to build robots without needing commercial kits. In a sim-to-real approach, early simulation allows improved team integration and reduced reliance on skills, equalizing the abilities of students, regardless of their backgrounds. Simultaneously, simulation encourages students to work harder in real implementation by equalizing their class level, resulting in competition-based learning.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to provide high school teachers with a structured activity to introduce their students in Natural Interaction fundamentals in the scope of Artificial Intelligence (AI) education. This is a key topic in AI literacy development, and the number of formal activities that can be used at classes is scarce. The one presented here has been designed and tested in the scope of the Erasmus + project called AI +, which aims to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) curriculum for high school students. AI + follows a Project Based Learning (PBL) teaching methodology, where the AI topics are trained following a practical approach, with a learning by doing perspective. In this case, the students faced the challenge of programming the Robobo educational robot to create a "robotic pet”, which should react to different interactions with the user in a natural way, showing appropriate emotions and using multimodal communication options. Students were introduced in basic aspects of human-robot interaction required to provide their own personality to the robot. The activity was tested in an educational intervention with seventeen high school students from 4 different countries. Due to COVID restrictions, the activity was carried out in online fashion in 2 sessions, using the RoboboSim simulator. Successful results were obtained in terms of understanding of the underlying concepts of Natural Interaction, and their relevance in AI. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
For almost 25 years, the goal of the RoboCup has been to build soccer robots capable of winning against the FIFA World Champion of 2050. To foster the participation of the next generation of roboticists, the RoboCupJunior competition takes place in parallel and provides a similar challenge of appropriate difficulty for high school students. RoboCupJunior has three main categories: Soccer, Rescue and OnStage. For the Soccer category, participants need to design, build and program a team of autonomous robots to play soccer against an opponent team of robots. The competition is physical in nature, since it assumes physical robots playing against one another. In 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for a competition of this type to take place, due to obvious restrictions on physical gatherings. To allow for some sort of participation, and inspired by positive experience of the larger RoboCup community, the Organizing Committee of RoboCupJunior Soccer has explored porting a portion of the challenge to a simulated environment. Many of the existing environments, however, are built for higher education/research teams competitions or research, making them complex to deploy and generally unsuitable for high school students. In this paper we present the development of SoccerSim, a simulated environment for RoboCupJunior Soccer, based on the Webots open-source robotics simulator. We also discuss how the participation of students was key for its development and present a summary of the competition rules. We further describe the case study of utilizing SoccerSim first as a testbed for a Demo competition, and later as part of RoboCup Worldwide 2021. The participation of more than 60 teams from over 20 countries suggests that SoccerSim provides an affordable alternative to physical robotics platforms, while being stable enough to support a diverse userbase. The experience of using SoccerSim at RoboCupJunior Worldwide 2021 suggests that a simulated environment significantly lowers the barrier to entry, as evidenced by the participation of many teams that have not participated before. To make it easy for similar competitions to take place in the future, we made the code of SoccerSim available as open-source, as well as the associated tooling required for using it in a tournament.
ABSTRACT
This Research Full Paper presents a proposal for a pedagogical approach to be applied to educational robotics on a virtual distance learning platform, to foster teaching and learning, knowledge sharing and interaction between teachers and students. Recent studies indicate that 21st century students can master different skills and competencies to achieve success in their education, among which we highlight collaborative learning and educational robotics. One of the resources which successfully employ collaborative activities is groupware, which is a virtual collaborative system that supports groups of people with common tasks or objectives and enables the management of group activities. Many research works show that educational robotics has become an important facilitating and motivating tool for students entering Computer-focused courses. Literature has shown that both tools are important for the application of a STEM approach and have led to good results in an educational environment. To analyse the learning perceptions of educational robotics in a collaborative environment, we have developed a pedagogical approach that relies on collaborative learning through a groupware called IGARA, developed on Moodle platform. Activities made available by the virtual environment were developed based on constructivist, interactionist principles, with task contextualization to enhance students' perception. In order to assess the functionality of such an approach, an exploratory study was carried out with a set of 14 students, divided into 3 groups, spatially distant due to Covid-19 pandemic safety measures. Preliminary results were very promising and groupware was well accepted by participants.
ABSTRACT
In recent years, engineering degree programs have become fundamental to the teaching of robotics and incorporate many fundamental STEM concepts. Some authors have proposed different platforms for teaching different topics related to robotics, but most of these platforms are not practical for classroom use. In the case of teaching autonomous navigation algorithms, the absence of platforms in classrooms limits learning because students are unable to perform practice activities or cannot evaluate and compare different navigation algorithms. The main contribution of this study is the implementation of a free platform for teaching autonomous-driving algorithms based on the Robot Operating System without the use of a physical robot. The authors present a case study using this platform as a teaching tool for instruction in two undergraduate robotic courses. Students evaluated the platform quantitatively and qualitatively. Our study demonstrates that professors and students can carry out different tests and compare different navigation algorithms to analyze their performance under the same conditions in class. In addition, the proposed platform provides realistic representations of environments and data visualizations. The results claim that the use of simulations helps students better understand the theoretical concepts, motivates them to pay attention, and increases their confidence.
ABSTRACT
This study aims to analyze how effective an educational robotics unit in a simulated environment is for improving primary school teachers’ understanding of basic concepts in robotics while assessing their didactic use when teaching mathematics. A descriptive and exploratory case study is developed based on a qualitative methodology. Seventeen teachers in training are assessed by using open questionnaires and learning scenarios created by the participants. The results showed that even though the teachers surveyed thought it was impossible to learn robotics concepts without a physical kit, they changed their main perceptions and managed to understand the concepts and designed activities that promote the resolution of mathematical problems. It is concluded that a simulated environment provides sufficient tools to learn basic notions of robotics without needing a physical kit, which can be used for educational purposes. © 2022
ABSTRACT
Inevitably, the rapid growth of the electronics industry and the wide availability of tailored programming tools and support are accelerating the digital transformation of the agricultural sector. The latter transformation seems to foster the hopes for tackling the depletion and degradation of natural resources and increasing productivity in order to cover the needs of Earth’s continuously growing population. Consequently, people getting involved with modern agriculture, from farmers to students, should become familiar with and be able to use and improve the innovative systems making the scene. At this point, the contribution of the STEM educational practices in demystifying new areas, especially in primary and secondary education, is remarkable and thus welcome, but things become quite uncertain when trying to discover efficient practices for higher education, and students of agricultural engineering are not an exception. Indeed, university students are not all newcomers to STEM and ask for real-world experiences that better prepare them for their professional careers. Trying to bridge the gap, this work highlights good practices during the various implementation stages of electric robotic ground vehicles that can serve realistic agricultural tasks. Several innovative parts, such as credit card-sized systems, AI-capable modules, smartphones, GPS, solar panels, and network transceivers are properly combined with electromechanical components and recycled materials to deliver technically and educationally meaningful results.
ABSTRACT
Computer-aided design (CAD) software is a fundamental engineering tool that is often integrated into educational programs, including those for electronics. When the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide in 2020, an introductory electronics course at our Institution had to be reformulated due to restrictions on holding face-to-face classes. In this scenario, traditional lab tasks were replaced by computer-based assignments that students worked on using CAD software. This paper introduces the software framework used for this purpose, which has the two features considered necessary to closely replicate a practical experiment: i) the ability to mimic breadboard circuit prototyping activities and ii) the ability to simulate the prototyped circuits. In order to enhance students' motivation for the educational activities, the assignments proposed in our course have focused on robotics applications for several years. This was conveniently accounted for by combining simulation of electronic circuits with robotics simulation. In this way, we can be reproduce the embodiment of electronic circuits and the interaction with an external environment that takes place in a real experiment. The paper describes the proposed software framework, gives examples of its use, and reports on students’ results for the first distance learning semester using the framework. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The field of robotics is multidisciplinary, employing fundamental knowledge and building upon skills acquired in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science courses. Hands-on engagement, which has become increasingly difficult to facilitate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is an integral component of any comprehensive engineering education program. A project-based approach using low-cost, pre-made kits offers practical experience in teamwork and collaboration, system design and implementation, problem solving and refinement of interdisciplinary skillsets through projects that can be completed at home or in the classroom. Robotics instruction and experimentation provides a means to achieve robust interdisciplinary learning outcomes, facilitating long-term retention of engineering concepts by illustrating the connections between theory and practice. This paper aims to establish the need for design integration throughout the undergraduate curriculum, identify existing methodologies for design integration, and develop a practical model for instructional use of Arduino Engineering Kits to support design education in the Electrical Engineering program. The kit provides basic design instructions and programming guidance for three projects: a self-balancing motorcycle, a mobile rover, and a whiteboard drawing robot. Each project operates using an Arduino MKR1000 microcontroller. The mobile rover project was selected for implementation after the foundational skill requirements and outcomes of each project were evaluated and matched to desired instructional outcomes across courses in the Electrical Engineering curriculum. Through amalgamation of the cognate fields of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mechatronics and computer science, the curriculum design that emerges from this paper will serve as a multidisciplinary educational tool. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, several challenges appeared before everyone. One of the biggest impacts that were observed was on education as a whole. The need for social distance and remote classes directly impacted teaching. Especially in matters of technology there were some more difficulties that needed to be overcome. In this article we will see an experience of how to teach robotics remotely at the IFSP/RGT in an accessible way to students and as a motivating tool during the period of remote classes. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a learning framework for Educational Robotics named sBotics, which includes a complete environment for teaching and programming skills acquisition designed for both teachers and K-12 students. Our framework has been developed using a gamified approach with the system and simulated environment developed in the Unity game engine. The main novelty of this platform is its ease-of-use combined with the flexibility to create a variety of scenarios with endless learning potential, in contrast to our evaluations where no alternatives with such characteristics were found for the K-12 range that we are targeting. Also as a contribution of our proposal, robot programs are treated as games that are affected by a disturbance model, which acts in the robotic system and environment variables. This model is introduced in order to approximate what happens in a real robot programming platform. Besides, it is possible for the user, throughout its use, to code in three levels of abstraction: its overly intuitive native programming language called R-Educ, BlockEduc (R-Educ version of Blockly), and C#. Programs can be compiled and interpreted by virtual robots executing any given command. As for teachers, the framework API offers tools that can be employed in the assembly and customization of the learning setup. The whole platform has been built as a tool dedicated to spreading the worlds of Robotics and Programming among youngsters, as well as making them more affordable to everyone. It has been validated by our experiments and is currently being used during the novel Coronavirus pandemic by the official RoboCupJunior Rescue trials in Brazil, currently with more than a thousand competing teams (about 5 thousands students).