STTR Phase I: A Low Cost Robotics kit for Elementary Education

该项目旨在设计和开发一种可编程的电子和机器人套件，以催化计算思维，工程设计和制造的学习，其价格点将为全国大量小学教室负担得起。这种教育机器人套件对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教育产生积极影响，从而鼓励不同背景的学生进入技术创新工作场所，从而促进国家的创新和创业精神，从而造福社会。该项目旨在通过结合市场上已有的低成本技术，以一种新颖的方式，创造一个真正的、负担得起的STEM课程工具。这些技术包括无线通信系统，现在可以在低成本的触摸平板电脑上使用，以及功能强大，价格低廉的微处理器，使小型定制硬件套件能够与此类平板电脑通信。通过将环境值（如光和声音级别）的感知与电机、灯光和其他输出表达式相结合，该套件将为学生提供在系统层面进行思考的机会。他们将创造交互式雕塑机器人，并将系统思维与编程、工程和设计联系起来，所有这些都是stem未来的终身技能。该项目结合了无线通信、平板电脑和嵌入式微控制器技术，融合在一个交互式系统上，用于指定响应性、环境感知机器人的行为，然后将结果行为锁定在微控制器上，以尽可能低的成本创建一个可编程的、响应性的教育机器人系统。机器人与机器人之间的通信是通过网状网络实现的，这使得教室中机器人之间的传感器共享和动作同步成为可能。平板电脑屏幕上新设计的拖放式编程界面展示了反馈控制系统的基本概念，并直接对嵌入式微处理器进行编程。将反馈控制系统规格直接上传到微处理器，从而使机器人能够自主操作，而无需始终使用专用编程平板电脑。该项目利用参与式设计、交互设计、硬件架构、固件编程和供应链分析来达到一个可用的系统，该系统可以根据国内和国际需求大量生产。这项工作的参与式设计部分将包括在当地学校部署的直接合作试点；参与教师的专业发展机会；以及在教室里对机器人动手活动的形成性评估。该项目将直接导致桥梁产品的商业化，该产品将最终的教育机器人套件的功能与适合在小学教室立即使用的工作平板电脑应用程序相结合。

This project intends to design and develop a programmable electronics and robotics kit that catalyzes the learning of computational thinking, engineering design, and making at a price point that will be affordable for large numbers of elementary school classrooms throughout the nation. Such an educational robotics kit benefits society by positively influencing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and, thereby, encouraging students from diverse backgrounds to enter the technology innovation workplace, spurring innovation and entrepreneurism in the nation. This project aims to create an authentic, affordable STEM curricular tool by combining low-cost technologies already in the marketplace, but in a novel manner. These technologies include wireless communications systems now available on low-cost touch tablets, as well as powerful, inexpensive microprocessors that enable small, custom hardware kits to communicate with such tablets. By combining the sensing of environmental values such as light and sound levels with motors, lights and other output expressions, this kit will provide a chance for students to think at the systems level. They will create interactive sculptural robots and connect systems thinking to programming, engineering, and design, all of which are lifelong skills for the STEM-focused future. This project combines wireless communication, tablets, and embedded microcontroller technologies to converge on an interactive system for specifying the behavior of a responsive, environmental-sensing robot and to then lock the resulting behavior onboard the microcontroller, creating a programmable, responsive robot system for education at the lowest cost possible. Robot-to-robot communication is effected using mesh networking, enabling sensor sharing and synchronization of action across robots in a classroom. A newly designed drag-and-drop programming interface on the tablet screen demonstrates the basic concepts of feedback control systems and directly programs the embedded microprocessor. Uploading of the feedback control system specification directly to the microprocessor, in turn, enables autonomous operation of the robot without the need for a dedicated programming tablet at all times. This project makes use of participatory design, interaction design, hardware architecture, firmware programming, and supply chain analysis to arrive at a usable system that can be produced in large quantities as appropriate for national and international demand. The participatory design portion of this work will include direct, collaborative pilots deployed in local schools; professional development opportunities for participating teachers; and formative evaluations of hands-on robotic activities, with prototypes, in classrooms. This project will lead directly to the commercialization of a bridge product that combines features of the final educational robotics kit with a working tablet app suitable for immediate use in elementary school classrooms.