Development of Underwater Robot for Teaching Material of Basic Mechanics

Abstract

This paper proposes underwater robots suitable for teaching materials for learning basic mechanics. Recently various robots for teaching materials have been used to educate future engineers. However, the ground based robots are limited due to the size of the contest rules, mechanics are left behind at the workshop. Thus, robots for teaching materials which mechanics have significant influence on solution to the target problem are desired. The authors have focused on underwater robot, because water causes large effect in terms of equilibrium between forces, even to small robots. We developed new teaching materials of underwater robot “Mark1” for junior high school students and held a workshop on a trial basis. We send out questionnaires and evaluated their answers by checklists. As a result, this workshop obtained a large training effect for education of basic mechanics. Then, underwater robot “Mark3” was developed for more advanced students. Mark3 had extensibility and was able to satisfy the needs of students. From the above, It was confirmed that the proposed underwater robots were useful for learning basic mechanics.