Robotics Education for Children at Secondary School Level and Above

Abstract

The present work describes the experience of teaching robotics for children at secondary school level. A set of exercises was designed and evaluated. The exercises were designed for teaching robotic systems, basic programming and control concepts, and the tasks included learning important mathematical and physical science definitions. The proposed robotics exercises were introduced to the curriculum of the London School of Mathematics and Programming and preliminary teaching and learning outcomes showed that the majority of the proposed robotics exercises were attractive to children independently of the tasks' difficulty.

PyBoKids: An Innovative Python-Based Educational Framework Using Real and Simulated Arduino Robots

“…Simulated robots are also used in pre-university education. For example, the TRIK-Studio environment includes a simple 2D simulator for the TRIK robot [22,32]. Another important example is the 3D simulator used in Robot Virtual Worlds (RVW) (http://www.robotvirtualworlds.com/) [33], which simulates robots from different manufacturers (VEX, LEGO, and TETRIX).…”

“…In exploring the existing literature, we found a set of exercises that are frequently used in different teaching frameworks and academic proposals, often based on the cross-curricular approach. One of the classic projects was Behavior Follows-Lines [6,12,22,32], in which the robot has infrared (IR) sensors pointing to the ground, which are white but have a thick black line. Another is the avoidance of obstacles [12,32], where the robot has an ultrasound sensor that allows it to detect objects that interfere with the robot's movement.…”

PiBot: An Open Low-Cost Robotic Platform with Camera for STEM Education

“…Other platforms are Thymio (Figure 2 left) [17,33,34], Meet Edison's or VEX robots ( Figure 2 middle and right), and simulated environments such as TRIK-Studio [28,35] or Robot Virtual Worlds (RVW) [36]. Beyond the robotic hardware platforms, different software frameworks can be found in educational robotics.…”

“…Exploring the existing literature, we found a set of exercises that are frequently used in different teaching frameworks and academic proposals, in an almost cross-curricular manner. One of the classic projects is the follow-line behavior [15,21,28,35], as shown in Figure 14. In this project, the robot has IR sensors pointing to the ground, which is white but has a thick black line.…”

“…In this project, the robot has IR sensors pointing to the ground, which is white but has a thick black line. Another is the avoidance of obstacles [21,35], as shown in Figure 15, where the robot has an ultrasound sensor that allows it to detect objects that interfere with its movement. The student's program must then order the motors to stop and turn until they find a free space to go forward again.…”