Management of sensors in robotic constructions provided by primary school children

Abstract

The existing work investigates the ways that sensors are being used by primary school children in the automations of educational robotics projects. The research findings revealed that among the available (distance, tilt and sound) sensors the students preferred the distance sensors first, the tilt sensors second and last the sound one in their projects. The study has also recorded that the majority of the contestants made a rather conventional use of the aforementioned sensors. The assessment of the children projects revealed that the beginners predominately used distance sensors, in a conventional way, while their code was ranked in the unistructural level of the SOLO taxonomy. Finally, they used event-driven programming and the interrupt method for event detection. On the other hand, the advanced ones apart from the distance sensor have also used the tilt and the sound sensors, in a more advanced way in terms of innovation. Their code, in terms of the SOLO taxonomy, was ranked between the multi-structural and the relational level and the event detection was held with polling method using a structured programming approach.