Abstract
The presented article describes the design features of an educational robotics project addressed for secondary school students and carried out at the University of Girona (UdG). The project, called Underwater Robotics Workshop, is about the students building an underwater exploration robotic vehicle using low-cost materials. Its ultimate objective is to promote engineering interest among students and motivate them to direct their future studies towards engineering degrees. The main purpose of this article is to describe this activity and to promote it. Versatility and adaptation are key values as the activity has been designed to be adapted to convenience or replicated. It is a continuation work of a previously published articles, now describing different technological adaptations related to the design of the vehicle’s controller, and the gathered experiences from added workshop celebrations in the recent years. The workshop has been defined as a project-based learning approach where the students learn about physics, engineering, electronics, programming, and robotics, as well as to use all kinds of working tools, according to the maker philosophy. To date, the opinions collected from the participants encourage continuation of the activity and, at the same time, ask for the introduction of novelties to keep the workshop updated with the contents of the subjects related to technology and sciences. This project is being held for more than 13 years in the UdG. More than 800 secondary school students have participated in the activity, building about 200 underwater vehicles in more than 50 editions of the workshop.
Highlights
The lack of interest of students in Europe and the United States for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies seems not to have changed much in the last ten years.On average, the number of science and engineering students has fallen by about 29% in Europe [1]
The number of science and engineering students has fallen by about 29% in Europe [1]
It is intended to encourage the imagination of students participating in different parts of the design, obviously prioritizing engineering aspects and that the resulting vehicles must respect the underwater environment. These kind of project-based activities are considered highly relevant for exposing students to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) [15]
Summary
The lack of interest of students in Europe and the United States for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) studies seems not to have changed much in the last ten years. It is intended to encourage the imagination of students participating in different parts of the design, obviously prioritizing engineering aspects and that the resulting vehicles must respect the underwater environment These kind of project-based activities are considered highly relevant for exposing students to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) [15]. Within the framework of the development of the activity, different types of concepts are considered and worked on, according to the curriculum of technology and science subjects studied in secondary education: Newton’s Laws, the Archimedes Principle, control of DC motors, engineering aspects related to the design of the structure and chassis of the vehicle and the location of the engines, the operation of a joystick, the study of different types of sensors, design and construction of different types of actuators with different technologies, use of open-source microcontrolled boards, programming, etc.
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