Abstract:

Educational Robotic (ER) is a field of study that aims to improve the learning experience of students through the creation, implementation, improvement, and validation of pedagogical activities, where robots play an active role. During the last decades, ER has been used as a powerful tool to develop not only technical skills (mechanic, electronic or programming), but also soft skills such as creativity, analytical thinking, teamwork, or problem solving.

In Spain, the University of Deusto (UD) was a pioneer organizing robotics competitions 25 years ago where students presented line-follower, dancers, or sumo robots. ER has evolved a lot during this time, and it has been integrated in low and intermediate educational levels. For example, the First Lego League (FLL) is an event that gathers thousands of students between 4 and 16 years old to solve a set of challenges and develop a science project. FLL tries to promote the interest of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in children and teenagers.

In the 2008/2009 academic year, the UD updated its degrees to the European Higher Education Area of the Bologna process. As the result of this process, the subjects that used ER within the teaching-learning process disappeared. Consequently, students stopped showing interest in the robotics contests. Since then, ER has not returned to the curriculum of Engineering degrees, and only the personal interest of some professors has kept ER present at the UD.

In 2014, after developing different competition robots with custom electronic systems, one professor studied the existing educational robotic platforms and concluded that these platforms have interesting learning features, but they do not satisfy the requirements of the competition robots (mainly, in the power phase for the engines used) and he designed the EASYbot platform in 2015. This system integrates an Arduino processor, two high power drivers, and several IO connectors in the same unit with the objective of facilitating the development of the electronic system for competition robots. It is very easy to integrate sensors, actuators (mainly motors) and communication modules (such as Bluetooth transceiver to control the robot from a mobile phone) with a plug&play mode and code examples to test them.

From the 2016/2017 academic year, this platform began to be used in bachelor’s end projects and in some subjects of the Faculty of Engineering. Usually, students must design robot’s structure, integrate the electronic components of EASYbot platform, and program control systems for competition robots. EASYbot platform allows to develop this kind of advanced robots in less than four-month period and finally, we celebrate a contest where students compete between them and with the professor’s robot in different categories: line-follower, tracker, mini-sumo and maze robot.

We have made this ER project 4 times and comparatively with other microelectronic project, academic results are only a bit better, but robotics projects are more complex, mainly in the programming and control systems. In our experience and with student’s valuations, we can affirm that competition robots are motivating for students, and it is possible to work several technical and soft skills in a fun and effective way. The multidisciplinary and adaptability to different environments and profiles, ER project is flexible and adaptable to first years of university degrees related to engineering.

Keywords:

Educational robotic, competition, engineering, university.