DIGITALHANDS-ON STEM FOR HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS: THE ANTIMATTER-FACTORY MOCKUP AND THE MINICERNBOT PLATFORM
1 European Organization for Nuclear Research (SWITZERLAND)
2 Jaume I University of Castellon (SPAIN)
2 Jaume I University of Castellon (SPAIN)
About this paper:
Appears in: INTED2020 Proceedings
Publication year: 2020
Pages: 6659-6663
ISBN: 978-84-09-17939-8
ISSN: 2340-1079
doi: 10.21125/inted.2020.1768
Publication year: 2020
Pages: 6659-6663
ISBN: 978-84-09-17939-8
ISSN: 2340-1079
doi: 10.21125/inted.2020.1768
Conference name: 14th International Technology, Education and Development Conference
Dates: 2-4 March, 2020
Location: Valencia, Spain
Dates: 2-4 March, 2020
Location: Valencia, Spain
Abstract:
Education is an important goal at CERN, specially for high-school students, interested to further studies on physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science, among others. In fact, the summer program for high school students and teachers is a great opportunity to face real STEM problems and their scientific solutions.The CERN-EN-SMM-MRO (Mechatronics, Robotics and Operations) section is in charge of designing and developing cutting-edge robotics technology to remotely perform real interventions in the accelerator scientific facilities. The CERNBot and TIM platforms are an example of these systems, which are continuously improved and adapted to the CERN necessities, while offering new scientific improvements to the Telerobotics research community.
High-School students participating in the education program use to spend 2 to 5 days at the Robotics Lab, understanding the necessity of robots for interventions in hazardous environments, and learning the related techniques (3D design, programming, user interfaces, robot control, etc.).
This paper presents the current state of the MiniCERNBot platform for high-school students, which is used to learn 3D design, Android programming, and vision script programming, in order to solve usual robotics interventions at CERN, using an education mockup that is inspired on a previous intervention performed in the Antimatter Factory.
Results show that students get more motivated by using a real robotic platform that solves an educational problem that is similar to a real one (i.e. antimatter factory), while being necessary to design their own 3D printing tools and programs to solve the problem. Once the students design their solution they spend several hours to solve the robotic intervention with the mockup, obtaining an score according to the steps performed successfully with their telerobotic platform (i.e. approach the panel, unscrew, release the cover, and recover the pretended radioactive source).
The paper will give details on the used techniques by the students, such as the vision programming procedure by using Python scripts and the Jupyter server.