Abstract:

The present work deals with a teaching method that aims to increase the level of understanding and motivation of undergraduate students in subjects related to industrial robotics. In particular, this approach is oriented to the topics of direct and inverse kinematics of manipulators.

In particular, teaching kinematics of robotic manipulators involve many aspects of learning that require more than a theoretical explanation of the subject; on the other hand, it is required to verify the concepts through simulation and experimentation in the laboratory.

An educational approach is presented that allows students to experiment with the different topics of the robotic manipulators through a laboratory integrated by a simulation stage based on a platform developed in the Simscape Multibody ™ library of Simulink® and a experimentation stage based on the educational kit of Lego Mindstorms EV3.

In a first instance, the topics are presented to students in a traditional way, that is, the teacher provides an explanation of the subject solving some numerical examples and assigning some homework exercises. Latter, the learning is reinforced through the verification of the theoretical results through the simulation platform. An experimentation phase is followed using a physical model built with Lego Mindstorms EV3 pieces. Finally, a second evaluation and a survey were applied to students to analyze their performance and motivations.

The results of this study showed that the understanding and motivation of the students for the topics of kinematics of robotic manipulators can be increased effectively using the proposed methodology.

Keywords:

Robotic manipulators, Simscape, Simulink, Matlab, Lego Mindstorms.