Development of Educational Service Robot and Practical Training

Abstract

As robot workshops for elementary and junior-high school students are being held across Japan, there is a large variety of teaching-material robots available for them. An increasing number of freshmen at colleges or universities already undertake some basic education on robotics before they enter a college or a university. On the other hand, as research and development of service robots is being promoted as a part of the measures to cope with the declining birthrate and the aging population of Japan, service robots are expected to come into much wider use. Under these circumstances, it is imperative for universities and technical colleges to enrich the contents of their robotics education, especially on service robots. However, there are no robots available as teaching materials. Therefore, we developed an educational service robot and used it to conduct practical trainings with the aim of motivating students to develop robots, as well as enhancing their motivations. This paper reports on the details of this project.