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.
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