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Chapter 79 — Robotics for Education

David P. Miller and Illah Nourbakhsh

Educational robotics programs have become popular in most developed countries and are becoming more and more prevalent in the developing world as well. Robotics is used to teach problem solving, programming, design, physics, math and even music and art to students at all levels of their education. This chapter provides an overview of some of the major robotics programs along with the robot platforms and the programming environments commonly used. Like robot systems used in research, there is a constant development and upgrade of hardware and software – so this chapter provides a snapshot of the technologies being used at this time. The chapter concludes with a review of the assessment strategies that can be used to determine if a particular robotics program is benefitting students in the intended ways.

Hampton Robotics Club

Author  cscsteam

Video ID : 239

A documentary which follows the very successful Hampton Robotics Club and their devotion to the popular activity Botball. Submitted to the 2014 i5 Film Competition by Hampton High School.

Elementary robotics challenge: Soldier Creek Elementary

Author  Sherry Admire

Video ID : 240

This video shows some of the runs by the Soldier Creek Elementary School participating in a Norman Oklahoma Challenge event of the Junior Botball Challenge (http://www.juniorbotballchallenge.org) in March 2014. These elementary-school students wrote their own C code to guide their robots around the can obstacle and to maneuver their robot to push a large number of cans into the starting box.

Global Conference on Educational Robotics and International Botball Tournament

Author  KIPR

Video ID : 241

GCER is a STEM-oriented robotics conference, in which the majority of the attendees, paper authors, and presenters are K-12 robotics students. Educator-paper tracks and technology-research tracks also occur. GCER is also the site of the International Botball Tournament, KIPR Open, aerial robots contests, and elementary-school robotics challenges. Some of the recent guest speakers at the conference have included Dr. Maja Mataric (human-robot interactions), Dr. Vijay Kumar (coordinated flying robots), and Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (androids). Details from: http://www.kipr.org/gcer .

Autonomous aerial-vehicle, carrier-landing contest (2001)

Author  KIPR

Video ID : 633

KIPR's first aerial robot contest featuring several middle and high schools from Oklahoma and neighboring states. It was held at the University of Oklahoma's Rawl Engineering Practice Facility. Teams used AR drones and KIPR's CBC2 controller to program the drone and have the drone react autonomously. No human control was used. Four very different approaches are shown to the event, in which the teams programmed their robots to totry land on a moving platform.

SeaPerch Challenge 2014 'The Heist'

Author  Chris Hansen

Video ID : 634

This video shows one of the first runs of the 2014 SeaPerch Challenge, in which underwater, remotely-operated robots have to maneuver between obstacles while collecting objects from the floor of the pool.

New Mexico Elementary Botball 2014 - Teagan's first-ever run.

Author  Jtlboys3

Video ID : 635

This video shows some elementary-school students running their line-following code (written in C) on a robot at the local Junior Botball Challenge event. Details from: https://www.juniorbotballchallenge.org .

Robotics summer camps - PRIA

Author  Practical Robotics Institute Austria

Video ID : 636

This short video displays several of the activities available at PRIA's educational robotics summer camps in Europe. Details from: http://pria.at/en/ .

World Robot Olympiad Japan 2014

Author  The Japan Times

Video ID : 637

Published on Sep 29, 2014: On Sept. 21, students from around Japan gathered at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology to test their skills as robot designers for a chance to compete in the upcoming World Robot Olympiad, to be held in Sochi, Russia. Details from: http://www.wroboto.org/ .