Robotics education to and through college

Abstract

Robotics education has made great strides to enable the next generation of engineers and workers with early education and outreach. This early education effort is able to engage students and promote interest, however an integrated pathway to and through college is needed. This pathway needs to build upon early experiences with opportunities to advance across age groups. This paper presents the authors experience developing robotics curriculum across age groups. Middle and high school education has been implemented in a summer camp environment utilizing two co-robotic platforms, a water sensing robot called GUPPIE and an assistive robot named Neu-pulator, engaging 201 total students between Summer 2014–2017. The university course is a senior level technical elective introducing autonomous systems through a mobile robotic platform, a smart car, with 72 total students in Spring 2017 and 2018. In this work, the survey results gathered from Summer 2017 pre-college and Spring 2018 college level activities are presented. Overall observations and lessons learned across age groups are also discussed to better create a pathway from young learners to practicing engineers. The key to success of robotics programs at any age are hands-on, exciting activities with sufficient expert support so that students are able to learn in a frustration free environment.