Development of an educational system to control robots for all students

Abstract

Machines controlled by computers are spreading in almost all areas of our society. However, students are not aware of the existence of such devices. At present, we have developed an educational system for secondary schools that can implement realistic computer controlled, autonomous mechanics. The system is composed of a controller board as hardware and a structured control language on top of the Dolittle programming language as software. Mechanics controlled by the controller board can be arranged according to the teacher's wishes. The biggest contribution of our system is its low-cost; students can bring their work home and use the system. In this paper, the design concept of our educational system and the design details are described. We then include the results of a survey which was taken at workshops for lower secondary school teachers. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.