Steam approach to autonomous robotics curriculum for high school using the robobo robot

Abstract

Teaching robotics in secondary school is common nowadays, although with heterogeneous approaches in different countries, mainly in the specific technology that is used. Even with such lack of standardization, there are many common elements in these early stages of educational robotics, focused on basic assembling, simple sensing, and locomotion, which are a consequence of the simplicity of the robots that are used. In this paper, we aim to go one step ahead, and propose an approach of how the next stage in educational robotics should be. To this end, we analyze the current situation of this subject in reference to the robotics market and society, and then we propose a structure for the curriculum development. This approach is based on the use of the Robobo robot, as a clear example of the type of device that allows to perform such update of the subject, and on the use of a STEAM methodology, where a global view of how to face a robotics problem is presented.