Abstract:

The paper described the novel approach to explaining the basics of electronics to elementary school students in a practical way. The approach is based on the method of letting the students build their own robot car, without significantly emphasizing the theory behind it. For this purpose, the special car robot kit was developed by the authors of this paper. The robot was designed as the raw electronics supplied with the electronic parts, which emulated the behavior of a car model. It contained 2 DC motors with rubber wheels, various lights such as front lights, rear lights, turn signals, and brake lights, which were implemented in the forms of LED diodes and a horn, which was implemented as an electromagnetic buzzer. It also contained an RFID card reader, which allowed it to lock and unlock the car by the user. The robot was controlled through the ESP32-WROOM-32D module, which was programmed in the C++ language. The students were given documentation in the form of an electronic schematic and they had to get familiar with all schematic symbols, their values, and their place and orientation on the PCB, in order to do the robot assembly. Despite their young age and lack of experience and knowledge, they were able to build a functional robot, which was controlled through a smartphone. Through the adoption of the Learning-by-doing theory, they picked up the knowledge, which was above their capacities, but they understood it in a simpler way.

Keywords:

Learning by doing, teaching, robot, electronics, car, ESP32, RFID.