Robot soccer in education

Abstract

The educational experiences from using robot soccer in computer science courses are outlined. The educational approach can be termed guided constructionism and it differs from traditional (pure) constructionism, which can be termed unguided constructionism, by combining hands-on experience with lecturing and guidance. We believe that some essential arguments need to be taught through lecturing and guidance, but also find it essential for the students to actively participate in our robot soccer competitions when the aim is to educate the students to be able to produce real-world applications when graduating from the university. In the computer science courses, the students were taught to work with robot soccer players with pre-defined robot morphology, with modifiable robot morphology and with robot team play. This should allow the students to learn (i) to manage the non-deterministic characteristics of the real environment, (ii) to integrate hardware and software solutions, and (iii) to manage collective and distributed systems. Indeed, with this knowledge, the students were able to win a number of international robot soccer tournaments.