Abstract
This study explores an opportunity to engage first-year engineering students in practice with a modern industrial robot Baxter and provides training in spatial skills. We developed a laboratory exercise in which the students operate the robot to perform spatial manipulations of objects. We implemented the exercise on a digital twin of Baxter in the Gazebo virtual environment. The digital twin was calibrated to mimic the physical properties of the Baxter and correctly simulate its spatial manipulations with oriented cubes. The exercise was delivered to a class of 25 students as part of the robotics workshop in the Introduction to Industrial Engineering course. We administered a post-workshop questionnaire with focus on the analysis of the learning outcomes and students' spatial difficulties. The students noted that the workshop and particularly the exercise effectively exposed them to industrial robotics and raised their spatial awareness in robot operation.
Highlights
An industrial robot was traditionally defined as "an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which can be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications" [1]
86% reported that the workshop exposed them to industrial robotics
43% pointed that the workshop contributed to their understanding of basic concepts in the field of industrial robotics
Summary
An industrial robot was traditionally defined as "an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which can be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications" [1]. Crenshaw [6] pointed that instructional robot platforms can be used to engage and motivate undergraduate students in experiential learning of the CPS key characteristics In her course, the students created a networked system of different robots and devices working together to perform a collaborative task. The intention of our research is to explore an opportunity to introduce basics of CPSs and modern robotics already from the first-year of engineering studies. Our research proposes and investigates an approach which involves first-year engineering students in practice with a modern industrial robot Baxter and supports their training in spatial skills. At the current stage presented in this paper we explore the opportunity to engage novice students in practice with the new generation industrial robot Baxter. Experiments have begun on its use for educating novice students, e.g. first attempts to utilize Baxter as a robot-teacher in an elementary school class [13]
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