The Challenges and Benefits of Using Robots in Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract Robots offer an excellent tool for teaching engineering concepts that can be employed in teaching and demonstrating a variety of individual subjects, practical exercises, lab classes and project work. Hands-on experience encourages students and increases motivation. Besides learning engineering concepts, students can develop valuable skills such as creativity, teamwork, designing and problem solving. To effectively use robots in higher education, a number of challenges have to be met: (i) appropriate hardware platforms as well as software frameworks are required, (ii) didactic concepts have to be integrated and (iii) ways have to be found to share materials and knowledge to allow teachers from different subjects to easily set up courses. Within the MoRob (Modular Educational Robotic Toolbox) project, we focussed on these issues and how to integrate them into a framework for educational robotics. The goal of this paper is to present the effectiveness of our efforts in meeting the challenges associ...