Integrating mobile robotics and vision with undergraduate computer science

This paper describes the integration of robotics education into an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The proposed approach delivers mobile robotics as well as covering the closely related field of Computer Vision, and is directly linked to the research conducted at the authors’ institution. The paper describes the most relevant details of the module content and assessment strategy, paying particular attention to the practical sessions using Rovio mobile robots. The specific choices are discussed that were made with regard to the mobile platform, software libraries and lab environment. The paper also presents a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of student results, including the correlation between student engagement and performance, and discusses the outcomes of this experience

What do Undergraduate Engineering Students and Preservice Teachers Learn by Collaborating and Teaching Engineering and Coding through Robotics?

This research paper presents preliminary results of an NSF-supported interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate engineering students and preservice teachers. The fields of engineering and elementary education share similar challenges when it comes to preparing undergraduate students for the new demands they will encounter in their profession. Engineering students need interprofessional skills that will help them value and negotiate the contributions of various disciplines while working on problems that require a multidisciplinary approach. Increasingly, the solutions to today\u27s complex problems must integrate knowledge and practices from multiple disciplines and engineers must be able to recognize when expertise from outside their field can enhance their perspective and ability to develop innovative solutions. However, research suggests that it is challenging even for professional engineers to understand the roles, responsibilities, and integration of various disciplines, and engineering curricula have traditionally left little room for development of non-technical skills such as effective communication with a range of audiences and an ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams. Meanwhile, preservice teachers need new technical knowledge and skills that go beyond traditional core content knowledge, as they are now expected to embed engineering into science and coding concepts into traditional subject areas. There are nationwide calls to integrate engineering and coding into PreK-6 education as part of a larger campaign to attract more students to STEM disciplines and to increase exposure for girls and minority students who remain significantly underrepresented in engineering and computer science. Accordingly, schools need teachers who have not only the knowledge and skills to integrate these topics into mainstream subjects, but also the intention to do so. However, research suggests that preservice teachers do not feel academically prepared and confident enough to teach engineering-related topics. This interdisciplinary project provided engineering students with an opportunity to develop interprofessional skills as well as to reinforce their technical knowledge, while preservice teachers had the opportunity to be exposed to engineering content, more specifically coding, and develop competence for their future teaching careers. Undergraduate engineering students enrolled in a computational methods course and preservice teachers enrolled in an educational technology course partnered to plan and deliver robotics lessons to fifth and sixth graders. This paper reports on the effects of this collaboration on twenty engineering students and eight preservice teachers. T-tests were used to compare participants’ pre-/post- scores on a coding quiz. A post-lesson written reflection asked the undergraduate students to describe their robotics lessons and what they learned from interacting with their cross disciplinary peers and the fifth/sixth graders. Content analysis was used to identify emergent themes. Engineering students’ perceptions were generally positive, recounting enjoyment interacting with elementary students and gaining communication skills from collaborating with non-technical partners. Preservice teachers demonstrated gains in their technical knowledge as measured by the coding quiz, but reported lacking the confidence to teach coding and robotics independently of their partner engineering students. Both groups reported gaining new perspectives from working in interdisciplinary teams and seeing benefits for the fifth and sixth grade participants, including exposing girls and students of color to engineering and computin

Robotics Education in the Current Industry

This project tries to identify the current robotics curriculum and robotics applications, and help advance the education of these unique machines. By first outlining the current robotics uses, we were able to determine where the industry was moving towards and how current education should be molded to accompany this change. Our pedagogical review is meant to help guide educators in forming a new curriculum based off of the success of the Nano technology fields that underwent a similar transformation

The Michigan Robotics Undergraduate Curriculum: Defining the Discipline of Robotics for Equity and Excellence

The Robotics Major at the University of Michigan was successfully launched in the 2022-23 academic year as an innovative step forward to better serve students, our communities, and our society. Building on our guiding principle of "Robotics with Respect" and our larger Robotics Pathways model, the Michigan Robotics Major was designed to define robotics as a true academic discipline with both equity and excellence as our highest priorities. Understanding that talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not, the Michigan Robotics Major has embraced an adaptable curriculum that is accessible through a diversity of student pathways and enables successful and sustained career-long participation in robotics, AI, and automation professions. The results after our planning efforts (2019-22) and first academic year (2022-23) have been highly encouraging: more than 100 students declared Robotics as their major, completion of the Robotics major by our first two graduates, soaring enrollments in our Robotics classes, thriving partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This document provides our original curricular proposal for the Robotics Undergraduate Program at the University of Michigan, submitted to the Michigan Association of State Universities in April 2022 and approved in June 2022. The dissemination of our program design is in the spirit of continued growth for higher education towards realizing equity and excellence. The most recent version of this document is also available on Google Docs through this link: https://ocj.me/robotics_majorComment: 49 pages, approximately 25 figure

An Interdisciplinary Team-based Mobile Robots design course for Engineering

An Interdisciplinary, Team-Based Mobile Robots Design Course for Engineering TechnologyAbstractThis work describes the educational experience gained during a new course in mobile robotics, a fourthyear elective course in the undergraduate Electrical Engineering Technology program at our University.The main topic of this course is concentrated on team-based, one semester-long robotics projects in whichstudents design and build mobile robots for different applications. A mobile robot is a system that contains mechanical and electronic parts that can be programmed toperform some specific functions, responding to sensory inputs under the control of an internal or externalcomputer. The reasons to use mobile robots as the main topic for the robotic course is that in addition toinvolving the electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines, robotics deals with other sciences andhumanities subjects, such as animal and human behavior imitation, learning techniques, and environmentinteractions. Robotic systems can relate to most processes in nature and human behavior. Because of this,their potential as educational tools for teaching and learning various subjects in technology and sciencesis unlimited The design and implementation of an autonomous navigation vehicle requires a broad knowledge inareas traditionally not covered in a single discipline. These areas include electrical and computerengineering, computing sciences, mechanical engineering, and other engineering disciplines. As a result,it is very difficult to train students and engineers within a single discipline to effectively design andimplement complex mobile robots. Thus, we felt that it was important to offer a robotics elective courseto establish an interdisciplinary framework to teach the basics and offer a structured course for educationin mobile robot design. One of the major goals of this new class is to expose students to industrial andcommercial quality design, and bridge the gap between conceptual understanding and concreteimplementations. After undergraduate students are able to apply abstract knowledge in concreteimplementations, subsequent higher-level, theory-oriented courses have more relevance.In this paper the authors present their experiences in using robotics in a one-semester course with focus ininterdisciplinary interactions and teamwork for the design and implementation of autonomous mobilerobots that have been able to participate in different robotic competitions that includes (but are notlimited) to the Trinity College Firefighting robotic competition, The Institute of Navigation (ION)Autonomous Lawn Mower and The international Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC)This course is used to fulfill ABET’s academic outcomes that require for engineering students to haveexperience working in interdisciplinary groups, be able to work in a team, and have experience inmanaging a project. The paper provides motivations and background information, describes the mobilerobotic team organization and the autonomous vehicle characteristics, the paper concludes with asummary and recommendations for future work

Master's in autonomous systems: an overview of the robotics curriculum and outcomes at ISEP, Portugal

Robotics research in Portugal is increasing every year, but few students embrace it as one of their first choices for study. Until recently, job offers for engineers were plentiful, and those looking for a degree in science and technology would avoid areas considered to be demanding, like robotics. At the undergraduate level, robotics programs are still competing for a place in the classical engineering graduate curricula. Innovative and dynamic Master’s programs may offer the solution to this gap. The Master’s degree in autonomous systems at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal, was designed to provide a solid training in robotics and has been showing interesting results, mainly due to differences in course structure and the context in which students are welcomed to study and wor

Selected NSF projects of interest to K-12 engineering and technology education

The National Science Foundation (NSF) portfolio addressing K-12 engineering and technology education includes initiatives supported by a number of programs. This list includes projects identified by searching lists of awards in the respective NSF programs as well as projects suggested for inclusion by researchers, practitioners, and program officers. The list includes projects concerned with standards in technology education, teacher professional development, centers for learning and teaching, preparation of instructional materials, digital libraries, and technological activities in informal settings, as well as small numbers of projects in several other areas. This compilation provides current information on projects of interest to educators, instructional designers, consultants, and researchers who are concerned with the development, delivery, and evaluation of instruction to develop technological literacy, particularly in K-12 engineering and technology education. Projects are grouped under headings for each program providing primary funding. Within each program, the award numbers determine the order of listing, with the most recent awards at the beginning of the list. Each award entry includes the project title, NSF award number, funding program, amount of the award to date, starting and ending dates, the principal investigator (PI), the grantee institution, PI contact information, the url of the project Web site, a description of the project’s activities and accomplishments, relevant previous awards to the PI, products developed by the project, and information on the availability of those products