PUBLIC OUTREACH ACTIVITY: USE OF RECYCLED MATERIAL FOR ASSEMBLING AN EDUCATIONAL ROBOTIC KIT

Popular science aims to make science and technology accessible to the general public. And in this line, in recent years, many activities are being carried out from different organizations. One of the most important is the European Researchers' Night, promoted by the European Commission. On this day there are workshops and demonstrations of different scientific experiments that explain to society that science is present in our daily tasks directly or indirectly, all this in an understandable and enjoyable way to arouse interest in science.

Our proposal, within this event, is a workshop and a demonstration in which we try to introduce children to robotics. In this workshop, the different components of an educational robot are explained in a simple way: motherboard, motors, sensors, actuators, ... and then they build a mobile robot, using materials that they can have at home, such as a box of cookies and a ping pong ball. Once they have the robot, they learn how to program it using block based coding, developing simple behaviours that help them understand the routines and working mode of mobile robots. At the same time of this workshop, a demonstration with educational robots was held showing examples of different robots, which in a playful and attractive way managed to get the attention of the public who attended the event.

This work presents, in detail, all the planning and organization of both the workshop and the demonstration, and finally, results and conclusions were presented.