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Author(s): Akhilesh Kumar Tiwari*

Email(s): akhileshtiwari@india.com

Address: ITM University, Atal Nagar, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India
*Corresponding Author: akhileshtiwari@india.com

Published In:   Volume - 32,      Issue - 1,     Year - 2019


Cite this article:
Tiwari (2019). Robotics Module in Enhancing Interactive Stem Education. Journal of Ravishankar University (Part-B: Science), 32 (1), pp. 34-37.



 


Robotics Module in Enhancing Interactive Stem Education

        Akhilesh Kumar Tiwari*

             ITM University, Atal Nagar, Raipur, Chhattisgarh

 

*Corresponding Author: akhileshtiwari@india.com

[Received: 18 January 2019; Revised version: 18 April 2019; Accepted: 20 April 2019]

 

Abstract. Teaching robotics to young students can increase their ability to be creative, innovative thinkers and more productive members of society throughout their school years. Indian government have already recognized the importance of robotics in the classroom teaching and started ATAL tinkering lab to be included in school education system. By teaching the basics of robotics to the students, one can open up a whole new world for them and exciting opportunities which they wouldn't have access to. In traditional teaching methods of science and engineering, students lack experience in applying physical principles to the physical situation in real time. Students are not engaged in creating interest in interactive learning. To overcome above problem, this paper presents a new and versatile interactive learning tool using the Whizbrabo Robotic Education Module. This module describes the method of an educational tool based on robotics to study electrical component interfacing, pcb design, mechanical structure design and elementary programming skill. The module has been demonstrated to school students of higher secondary, and undergraduate student of various colleges. The key advantages of robotics in school education will enhance the level of programming, creativity and prepare them for the future, turn their frustration into innovation and promote inclusiveness. Robotics has a lot of educational potential.

Keywords: interactive learning, educational tool, school education.

Introduction

Robots are slowly being incorporated into our society, and the number of service robots has already dominated industrial robots. Robots are slowly beginning a seamless integration process in everyday life, both at home and at school. This impact of social robotics is even more important for children and teenagers, where robots can be used for their development and intellectual growth. The content of school education must reflect the innovative transformation of the modern technical environment and the updating of the technical activities of society. While teaching physical principles of science and engineering, it is essential to engage students in learning through interactive hands-on activities using technology. Lack of interest combined with a lack of practical learning experience can lead to lower rates of attrition in science and engineering. Teaching should focus on the formation of knowledge, skills and competences to enable the younger generation to integrate successfully into modern socio-technical systems, to effectively maintain and develop society's scientific and technological potential. Educational robots are a subset of education technology used to help students learn and improve their education performance. Robots give the learning context an embodiment and the ability to add social interaction and thus advance purely software-based learning. Educational robotics is seen as a way to shape engineering thinking in school children, develop their interest in technical creativity, focus on the choice of engineering professions and specialties. However, study materials designed for robotics classes are mainly aimed at supporting additional children's education. Technological advances have reduced the cost of robots and made it easier to put them in classrooms with tight budgets. Research also suggests that robots are interconnected in a variety of areas. A robot consists of motor components, sensors and software. Each of these parts depends on different knowledge fields, such as engineering, electronics and informatics. This interdisciplinary nature of robots means that if students learn to design robots, they will inevitably learn about the many other disciplines used by robotics. The main purpose of this research is to make a low cost device that can be easily made available to the school students to learn the new technologies which is incorporated in it. In the present work a demonstration of low cost Whizbrabo robot developed at ITM University, Raipur is done to understand the basic principle and concepts like mechanical design, interfacing of components to printed circuit board, circuit layout design and application development. Whizbrabo is a wireless controlled robot which uses an Arduino Nano board as a controller unit. The Whizbrabo robot kit comprises of 3D printed mechanical parts, a printed circuit board, servo motors, Arduino Nano board, Bluetooth module for wireless communication and a dedicated application to be controlled by mobile phones. The approach is transparent and the learner can see in real time the physical principles in action. The method develops students ' interest in learning apart from the increased academic skills required for student success in school education.

Methodology

The Whizbrabo robot parts are designed in the CAD software Majorly the design can be classified in four different parts one is the base part which is designed to move 180 degrees from its extreme left or extreme right position. The next part is the shoulder just above the base and the path for its movement is around 90 degrees. Attached to shoulder next part is arm which can be programmed to reach the specific position of the object. The end factor of the robot is a gripper which can be controlled to hold objects of variable sizes. The Whizbrabo robot is primarily designed for pick and place operation but by changing the end factor one can easily program it for the specific operation they want to perform making the robot more versatile in its operation. The parts of the robot are first designed in the CAD software and with STL file the design is then printed with the use of 3D printer. Figure 1 Whizbrabo Robot. The overview of the designed mechanical parts is shown below. Figure 2 Base Figure 3 Shoulder Figure 4 Gripper Figure 5 Arm. The electrical and electronics components of the robot are:  Power supply +5 V·  Arduino Nano board·  Servo motors·  Bluetooth module·  Dedicated printed circuit board· The Arduino Nano can be powered via the Mini-B USB connection, 6-20V unregulated external power supply (pin 30), or 5V regulated external power supply (pin 27). The power source is automatically selected to the highest voltage source. Arduino Nano board is programmed by the Arduino IDE software which is an open source platform for the developers. Arduino Nano uses a microcontroller ATMega 328p. The ATmega328P has 32 KB, (also with 2 KB used for the bootloader. The ATmega328P has 2 KB of SRAM and 1 KB of EEPROM. The Arduino Nano has a number of facilities for communicating with a computer, another Arduino, or other microcontrollers. Rather than requiring a physical press of the reset button before an upload, the Arduino Nano is designed in a way that allows it to be reset by software running on a connected computer.

       The PCB layout and the designing of PCB are done on the Easy EDA online open source platform. It provides the required tools and components for the PCB designing. A dedicated application is also developed in app inventor for mobile platform to easily control the movement of each and every part of the robot. App Inventor for Android is an open-source web application originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It uses a graphical interface, very similar to Scratch and the Star Logo TNG user interface, which allows users to drag-and-drop visual objects to create an application that can run on Android devices. The application sends the position with the slider buttons to dedicated servo motors interfaced to that particular button. The communication between the application and board is done through the Bluetooth module HC 06 which sends the data serially to the board. One can also use the application to save the positions of each movement so that the robot can also be programmed for teach operation. Figure 8 Mobile Application.

 

Figure 1 Whizbrabo Robot

 

 

 

Observation and Results

The methodology of designing the robot components, assembling the parts, interfacing the components demonstrates that students will actively involved in learning principles related to robotics. They will be inspired to investigate the activities by changing the variables and predicting them. Apart from the student’s interest in learning, the tool is dynamic and interactive and offers a wide range of opportunities for students to explore the relationship between theory and practice. The technique will empower students with critical thinking, analysis and strengthen the basic principles and concepts through new practical activities.

 

Discussion

The purpose of this research is to introduce the robotics in STEM education for school curriculum to make the students familiar with robots. The education model has to be revamped to meet the future requirements. The syllabus in schools should provide more weightage to the practical in spite of theory classes. Also it can be easily justified with the present scheme of government ATAL tinkering lab which is again designed to promote robotics education in school level. As in coming future the use of robot will be everywhere and there is a huge scope of job creation if a student will learn the concepts and will start thinking in this direction.

Acknowledgement

The present work is a part of research activity funded and done in school of engineering & research department of ITM University, Raipur. The author thanks Dr. Sitaram Soni (VC I/C ITM University, Raipur) for supervising the work and providing extreme support during the development of robot. The author also thanks Mr. Yugal Kishor, Mr. Praveen Bhojane, Mr. Rakesh Sahu and Mr. Ashok Dahare from SER for their support.

References

Mubin, O., Stevens, C. J., Shahid, S., Al Mahmud, A., & Dong, J. J. (2013). A review of the applicability of robots in education. Journal of Technology in Education and Learning, 1(209-0015), 13.

Tuluri, F. (2015, March). Using robotics educational module as an interactive STEM learning platform. In Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC), 2015 IEEE (pp. 16-20). IEEE.

Barker, B. S., & Ansorge, J. (2007). Robotics as means to increase achievement scores in an informal learning environment. Journal of research on technology in education, 39(3), 229-243.

Ospennikova, E., Ershov, M., & Iljin, I. (2015). Educational robotics as an inovative educational technology. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 214, 18-26.

Bers, M. U., Ponte, I., Juelich, C., Viera, A., & Schenker, J. (2002). Teachers as designers: Integrating robotics in early childhood education. Information technology in childhood education annual, 2002(1), 123-145.

Beer, R. D., Chiel, H. J., & Drushel, R. F. (1999). Using autonomous robotics to teach science and engineering. Communications of the ACM, 42(6), 85-92.

 

 

 



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Author(s): Akhilesh Kumar Tiwari*

DOI: 10.52228/JRUB.2019-32-1-7         Access: Open Access Read More