Análisis y diseño de un prototipo de una mano robótica con catorce grados de libertad, capaz de ser dirigida a través de internet en tiempo real

En el mundo de la robótica se encuentran muchos trabajos en el área de las manos robóticas muchas de las cuales se encuentran fuera del alcance de la gente del común o de las pequeñas empresas debido a sus altos costos, el equipo especializado que se necesita y la falta de proveedores en el país, lo que puede llegar a limitar el desarrollo y aplicación de este tipo de tecnologías en nuestra región. El costo del robot depende de sus especificaciones, capacidad, flexibilidad y tecnología. Además de los factores complementarios como equipos periféricos, dispositivos de fijación y señalización, puesta en marcha y puesta a punto, servicio postventa, entrenamiento y mantenimiento. Usualmente una solución completa puede estar por el orden de 30.000 y 70.000 dólares, sin embargo, hay industrias que por su tamaño requieren de más recursos. Este proyecto pretende abrir una ventana para el desarrollo de estas tecnologías en nuestra región entregando un análisis y diseño de una mano robótica que sirva como base para futuras investigaciones en este campo. En la actualidad en las diferentes universidades del eje cafetero que poseen el programa de Ingeniería de sistemas (ver tabla 1) no se encuentra ninguna que posea en su pensum la materia de Robótica, si algunas materias allegadas a este campo, pero no una que esté enfocada en ella

Online Learning Resources: Dos and Don’ts of an Institutional Approach

As part of its commitment to supporting low socio-economic students, Faculty of Science at Charles Sturt University (CSU) explored faculty-wide implementation of online resources to support its practical classes. In order to do so, review of freely available and commercially produced resources was conducted. In addition survey of staff and students’ use and attitudes to online resources was performed. A number of freely available resources that supported some science subjects were identified on the world wide web. Most common barriers to faculty-wide implementation of these resources were limited scope, low quality and reliability. Four commercial platforms were reviewed and found to be of similar quality. Students and staff perceived these resources to be useful addition to the course, but several issues were identified. The issues raised by the staff included extra time to set up and administer online resources, loss of autonomy and limited customisation and equity of access among the students due to extra cost. Low take up rate among students in some subjects was a concern. Valuable lessons learnt during this review are discussed in this paper

Effect of incremental pattern transformation strategy on academic achievement, job task performance and learning satisfaction among vocational trainees

Acquisition of conceptual and procedural knowledge is often challenging especially when the content deals with symbolic representations whereas not limited to memorizing the symbol but also requires a learner to have multiple factual knowledge associated with the real representation. The aim of this study was to test the effect of using incremental pattern transformation materials (iOST) – theoretically grounded materials - on conceptual and procedural knowledge acquisition among vocational trainees. The iOST was designed to enhance trainees’ learning of symbolic representations in electrical circuit diagrams. The quasi-experimental design method was used with 110 vocational trainees who were taking the vehicle air conditioning course from two vocational training centres. Trainees were divided into three groups, two treatment groups (assigned to paper-based iOST and animation-based iOST) and one control group. The duration of study was six weeks. Pre-test and post-test were used for assessing academic achievement, while practical test and a questionnaire were used for job task performance and learning satisfaction respectively. The ANCOVA, Chi-Square Test and Mann-Whitney U Test were used to test for differences between groups on academic achievement, job task performance and learning satisfaction respectively while the Spearman's rank-order correlation method was used to assess associations between learning satisfaction, conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results show that the experimental groups are better on academic achievement (effect size = .329) and job task performance (effect size = .657) with both groups exhibiting high learning satisfaction. The findings indicate that the iOST materials (irrespective of media) are effective in promoting learning of symbolic representation and support the acquisition of conceptual and procedural knowledge for better task performance. The findings also suggest that, appropriately designed learning materials can support learning and job performance