Exploring Robot Connectivity and Collaborative Sensing in a High-School Enrichment Program

Abstract

Education is facing challenges to keep pace with the widespread introduction of robots and digital technologies in industry and everyday life. These challenges necessitate new approaches to impart students at all levels of education with the knowledge of smart connected robot systems. This paper presents the high-school enrichment program Intelligent Robotics and Smart Transportation, which implements an approach to teaching the concepts and skills of robot connectivity, collaborative sensing, and artificial intelligence, through practice with multi-robot systems. The students used a simple control language to program Bioloid wheeled robots and utilized Phyton and Robot Operating System (ROS) to program Tello drones and TurtleBots in a Linux environment. In their projects, the students implemented multi-robot tasks in which the robots exchanged sensory data via the internet. Our educational study evaluated the contribution of the program to students’ learning of connectivity and collaborative sensing of robot systems and their interest in modern robotics. The students’ responses indicated that the program had a high positive contribution to their knowledge and skills and fostered their interest in the learned subjects. The study revealed the value of learning of internet of things and collaborative sensing for enhancing this contribution.