View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repository of the Academy's Library 1 Development, Usability and Communities of Modular Robotic Kits for Classroom Education Arp´ad´ Tak´acs1, Gy¨orgy Eigner2, Levente Kov´acs2, Imre J. Rudas1 and Tam´as Haidegger1,3 1Antal Bejczy Center for Intelligent Robotics, Obuda´ University, Budapest, Hungary 2Physiology Control Group, Obuda´ University, Budapest, Hungary 3Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology, Wiener Neustadt, Austria Abstract—Robotics is becoming a mainstream phenomenon, Software environment provided with the system has great entering all domains of our lives. Besides the cutting edge importance to introduce children to robotics related software research and development, the classroom and home education of technologies, while the validated curriculum is necessary to robotics are equally becoming important. Numerous educational kits have appeared on the market recently, ranging from simple facilitate the work of the teachers and instructors, and also to toolboxes and toys to complex, configurable R&D sets. Their introduce best practices in the education in a structured way. value in formal teaching lies in modularity, and the applicability Some systems only target the functions related to entry level of the adjoin curriculum. Some kits have already attracted programming, such as ROMO (http://romotive.com), iRobot major crowds of users, forming strong communities. The aim (http://www.irobot.com), Codie (http://www.getcodie.com) or of this article is to review the currently available educational robotics kits along their possible usability in formal education, HEXBUG (http://www.hebug.com), therefore they are omit- focusing the analysis on system capabilities, modularity and ted. Validated tasks at software level are important, since teaching materials available. The summary of these teaching aids credentialing can only be guaranteed at a national standard should ease the decisions of robotics experts and instructors when level with accredited teaching programs. choosing their tools for teaching and demonstration. The article guides the reader through the most important systems presenting their main features in a tabular format, I. INTRODUCTION facilitating the choice of best use. The work is structured as Robotics needs to become an integral part of classroom follows: Section II discusses the most relevant publications education, since we have to prepare the next generation for the in the topic. Section III explains the methods of research, organic coexistence of robots at various levels of the society. In selection and evaluation of the discussed robotic kits, while higher education, engineering schools have long been relying Section IV gives a detailed overview of the most relevant on using open interfaces to certain industrial robots, and robotic kits identified during research. The paper is concluded integrated such systems for teaching, or provided funding with a summary of our findings and the discussion of Table I, for talented students to build their own robots. However, summarizing the most important feature of these robotic kits. at undergraduate, and moreover, at K-12 level, price and complexity might be a prohibiting factor, as students need II. RELATED WORK more structured form of robot courses, and building fully custom robots might be impossible for larger classes. While robotic education has grown tremendously in signi- Robotic kits have been around for a long while, but only ficance, there are surprisingly few publications assessing or recently achieved such a level that they are now to be con- comparing existing products and prototypes. A notable review sidered as a distinct sub-field of educational robotics. Their was written by Ruzzente et al. about available robotic kits for popularity increased with the recent renaissance of the STEM tertiary education, addressing their versatility, modularity and fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in price, highlighting kits with ROS compatibility, but providing higher education [1]. When it comes to the design of a new little information about community development, software and robotics course, many factors play a role regarding the choice educational materials [2]. Back in 2007, Hilal et al. published a of the optimal hardware platform. Modularity is an absolutely detailed survey about the available commercial starter kits for key requirement, since new classes are using the kits every robot building [3]. In the past decade, the robotics community semester. Modularity is supposed to come hand in hand with experienced a rapid development of the field, and the ap- reconfigurability and tuning of course materials and tasks, pearance of new kits, technologies and software environments leading to an optimal system after customization. Systems with created a strong need to publish an update the list of kits. The very limited options and extensions were not included in this usability of robotic kits in teaching artificial intelligence [4], review, since they would never be able to provide the above there general use in the classroom [5] and their integration advantages. into the educational methodology have been discussed in the When presented with a set of tasks, children are getting literature in general [6]. Benitti explored the potential of using familiar with the basics of mechatronics, assembling, building robots in schools in a review paper [7], while the opportunities and testing functional equipment. These goals can already be and challenges of this new trend were addressed by Alimisis in achieved by relying on building kits alone, such as LEGO or 2013 [8]. An overview of the possibilities for teaching STEM fischertechnik. subjects using robots was published by Chiou [9], but none of 2 these works gave a detailed description of individual robotic counties or schools systems is rather a political than a scientific kits and their capabilities. issue. However, during our research it was clearly seen that the popularity of robotic kits in education is significantly higher in III. METHODS the developed countries, where school systems have undergone When it comes to evaluating educational materials, creating an educational revolution in the past decades (typically Wester an objective metric proves to be very challenging due to the Europe and North America), while the kits are still on the edge diversity of these tools in terms of intended use, efficiency, of breaking into the market of developing countries (mostly level of abstraction etc. In order to get an overview of the in South Asia and Africa), which still prefer the traditional existing educational materials in STEM education, three main educational methods. Furthermore, most of the listed toolkits channels were investigated for gathering information: are still unaffordable for average public schools in many countries of the world, therefore for some years the true • Investigating online and printed educational materials of availability will be restricted due to the cost factor. the STEM fields; • Contacting the distributor of robotic kits/educational ma- Nowadays, robotics in elementary and middle schools is terials directly; used for hands-on demonstration in programming, engineer- • Browsing the websites of the manufacturers of various ing, robotics or technology courses. There certainly is a need robotic kits; for a curriculum that emphasizes the use of robotic kits to teach • Conducting literature research on related work from con- and demonstrate the laws of physics, theorems of mathematics ferences and journal papers. etc. In order to address this critical point, Table I summarizes Our main goal was to create an objective evaluation criteria the curriculum options available for each described robotic kit focusing on educational resources. This paper focuses on in three categories: SDK (software development kit), Educa- robotic kits with a level of modularity (explained later), which tion (STEM fields) and Other. are partly or completely intended for use in STEM education. The modularity of the discussed kits is one of the key Evaluation of the collected kits was based on a subjective properties, since it facilitates learning and offers large variety classification. Consequently, the diversity of the educational of construction possibilities. Due to the diversity of the com- materials offers several evaluation criteria, which could be mercially available kits, an objective evaluation of the level of considered prior and during collection of data. These criteria modularity is challenging. A detailed modularity description include: for each kit discussed in Section IV, and a subjective rating • Cost; of this property has been included in Table I and were rated • Target audience; as follows. Robotic kits that require assembly upon purchase, • Modularity level; but only one type of robot can be assembled using the parts, • Quality of educational materials; were given the 1/5 points to the modularity level. Robotic • Design (mechanical and electrical); kits with pre-built sensor mounts, changeable actuators and • Development and extension possibilities; sensors but a limited variety of skeleton parts were rated 3/5. • Compatibility; Kits containing elementary building parts such as gears, joints, • Availability; rods and plates, which allows the construction of any custom • Portability. designed and modifiable robot, were rated as 5/5. As it can be seen, most combinations of the above mentioned