Content for teachers and students about robotics in our world. Is robotics the Perfect Platform for 21st Century Learning? Read on!.. Would you like your student robotics activities presented here? Leave a comment or Facebook Messenger me...
Nice video... a bit of an insider look at Student Robotics with LEGO materials as an approach for crucial STEM Learning...
Robotic Legos Teach Elementary School Students STEM Skills
A good start... but there's much more!
Click on book cover for information
Getting Started with LEGO Robotics. Anyone who
works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating
platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too)
This books explains it all!
As I was saying to the students in my graduate course 'The Instructional Technologist as School Leader' last night, in order for schools to keep up with the wonderful tech trends happening now so that they can offer kids wonderful, relevant learning experiences, the school Technology Teacher will need to embrace trending developments as they happen. I think all schools should have a robotics program and 3D printers are another, similar 'maker-related' activity type... one that most likely will go into the school's Computer Lab/Technology Room/Library Media Center... Here's and interesting crossover, 3D Printing and Robotics in one... the shape of school technology programs to come? :)
3D printer produces robot that gets up and walks away
It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie like "Blade
Runner." But researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new 3D printing process that creates robots that are fully functional from the moment they come off the printer.
The normal process for creating something complex and mobile like a robot through 3D printing
usually involves multiple print runs to make each component. After all
the pieces are printed out, then the object needs to be assembled. MIT's
new process is significant in that the production period is
streamlined, with the robot's solid and liquid hydraulic parts being
created in one step, according to a university press release.
A
paper on the research was just accepted to the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers' International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA), which will be held this summer. The paper was
co-authored by MIT postdoc Robert MacCurdy and Ph.D. candidate Robert Katzschmann, along with Harvard undergrad Youbin Kim.
"Our
approach, which we call 'printable hydraulics,' is a step towards the
rapid fabrication of functional machines," CSAIL Director Daniela Rus,
who oversaw the project, said in the release. "All you have to do is
stick in a battery and motor, and you have a robot that can practically
walk right out of the printer."
To model this single-step process,
the research team printed a small six-legged robot that is able to
crawl with the aid of 12 hydraulic pumps that are embedded in its body.
How does the printer work? An inkjet printer deposits drops of
material that are incredibly small -- less than half the width of a
single human hair. The object is printed layer by layer, bottom to top. High-intensity UV light
solidifies the materials -- with the exception of liquids -- used to
create the object. Within each layer is a photopolymer, which would
solidify, and a non-curing material or a liquid.
"Inkjet printing
lets us have eight different print-heads deposit different materials
adjacent to one another, all at the same time," MacCurdy explained. "It
gives us very fine control of material placement, which is what allows
us to print complex, pre-filled fluidic channels."
"As far as I'm concerned," he added, "inkjet-printing is currently the best way to print multiple materials."
The
robot that was ultimately produced weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is less
than 6 inches long. In order to make it mobile, a single DC motor is
included that spins a crankshaft that is used to pump fluid through the
machine's legs to power its movement.
"If you have a crawling
robot that you want to have step over something larger, you can tweak
the design in a matter of minutes," MacCurdy suggested. "In the future,
the system will hardly need any human input at all -- you can just press
a few buttons, and it will automatically make the changes."
Eventually,
MacCurdy said this kind of robot could be used in disaster relief
situations. It could be employed at a nuclear site or used to search the
scene of an earthquake.
In addition to promoting early engagement in STEM for students,
robots can also help reach students with disabilities. Texas-based
company RoboKind has developed Milo, a robot that helps special ed
teachers interact with who are on the autism spectrum.
Milo looks like a person, with a range of facial features that allow realistc expression.He delivers pre-programmed research-based lessons that teach social
behaviors, helping elementary and middle school students understand the
meaning of emotions and expressions. The humanoid robot also can act as a
role model of sorts, demonstrating appropriate social behavior and
responses.
The concept underlying Milo’s usage is that students on the spectrum
can be generally more comfortable interacting with non-humans. That
means interacting with Milo facilitates a reduction in stress and
anxiety.
“Recent research has shown that children working with a therapist and
Milo are engaged 70-80% of the time,” the company RoboKind says,
“compared to just 3-10% of the time with traditional approaches...”
Click on book cover for information
Getting Started with LEGO Robotics. Anyone who
works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating
platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too)
This books explains it all!
"For National Robot Week, a look at two approaches to incorporating robotics in the classroom
In honor of National Robot Week, Education
Dive took a look at two ways robots are being used in K-12 classrooms:
one that helps inspire student interest in coding and another that helps
children on the autism spectrum learn social-emotional skills.
'Teaching' robots tricks with code
Robots can certainly teach students, but can students teach robots?
That’s the idea behind a new competition called the Vermont Robot Rodeo, currently unfolding in the Green Mountain state.
It’s a collaborative project. For the rodeo, around fifty schools
across the state “host” a variety of robots, sharing their learning
strategies with each other on social media as the project progresses.
Schools can borrow robots and swap them out for different models.
The main goal of the competition is to provide a fun and interactive
way to get students coding so they can “train” their robots to perform a
stunt, which is generated with code, for the big Robot Rodeo, slated
for May.
Will Bohmann
is the Educational Technology Integration Specialist at the Center for
Technology, a tech high school in Essex, VT. He’s been experimenting
with a Wink robot from PlumGeek Software, designed to introduce programming to newbies and to work with experienced coders alike.
Wink uses an open source platform called Arduino IDE.
“I named my robot Ferris, because I had some challenges getting him to school each day,” Bohmann blogged.
“The challenge of setting up reminded me that sometimes Ferris just
needed a day off. Now that I've broken him in, he's been pretty
dependable and can do some exciting things.” Richmond Elementary School, Colchester Middle School, and St. Albans City School are participating.
Students at RES received their first robot, called a “cubelet,” in January 2016, and the experimentation began.
The
elementary school’s afterschool enrichment program experimented with
various “code-able” robots for six weeks, including Dash from
WonderWorks, Sphero, BeeBot, Cubelets and Ozobot, all borrowed from the
Vermont Robot Rodeo.“Students got to witness the direct response of
their inputs and commands as the robots physically reacted to their
code,” enrichment teacher Darcie Rankin, who directed the program, noted.
Rankin said "students had the option to continue coding robots or to
explore Hour of Code, Scratch or Minecraft” in the school's computer
lab, and students were able to move between options as they explored,
collaborated and learned. At RES, third-grade students in the school’s
enrichment program used robots to supplement learning about
electricity, then made a video featuring talking robots explaining the
concepts they learned.
At Colchester Middle School, students trained a robot called Dash for a month before sending him off to St. Albans.
Matt Gile, the school’s AV assistant, created a video encapsulating Dash’s time with Colchester students.
Erica Bertucci coordinates STEAM learning at St. Albans City School,
from grades pre-K-8. Although St. Albans owns six of their own robots,
they received a cubelet from the Robot Rodeo, and Bertucci was able to
incorporate it into exploration time even for her youngest students.
"The robot is programmed, in part, by how you put blocks together," she said.
Bertucci took out the cubes, and allowed her five-year-old students to figure out the robot themselves.
"They first said, oh look, blocks!" she recalled. "And then — magnets! They realized that they were magnetic blocks. Then, a light was blinking!"
Bertucci remained silent while the kids started experimenting and playing with the cubelet.
"They started guessing: Is it a robot? Why is it moving? Why isn’t it
moving?" she said. "That kind of problem-solving at that early level,
in a hands-on tangible way, it was so exciting."
In South Burlington’s Orchard School,
K-5 students spent five weeks training Dash/Dot, BB8, Spheros and Finch
robots. They also entered into an interstate partnership with schools
in Georgia and Connecticut, using Flipboards to challenge peers to teach
their own school robots.
The challenges presented by
Vermont students ranged from teaching robots the ABC’s to having them
say names. They also fielded challenges from the out-of-state students,
like this one, where a Finch was trained to spin in a circle..."
Getting Started with LEGO Robotics. Anyone who
works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating
platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too)
This books explains it all!
Couldn't resist a little nostalgia! The appeal of robots to kids, I guess, reaches out over the decades... this commercial is (yikes, I actually remember seeing it when I was 11) well over half a century old! "LOOK FOR YOUR ROBOT COMMANDO; HE'S LOOKING FOR YOU!!!" Enjoy:)
Getting Started with LEGO Robotics. Anyone who works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too) This books explains it all!
