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

该项目旨在设计和开发一个可编程的电子和机器人工具包，促进计算思维，工程设计的学习，并以全国大量小学教室可以负担得起的价格进行制作。这样的教育机器人工具包通过积极影响科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）教育而使社会受益，从而鼓励来自不同背景的学生进入技术创新工作场所，促进国家的创新和创新。该项目旨在通过结合市场上已经存在的低成本技术，但以新颖的方式创建一个真实的，负担得起的STEM课程工具。这些技术包括现在可用于低成本触摸平板电脑的无线通信系统，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进行通信。通过将环境值（如光和声级）的传感与电机、灯光和其他输出表达式相结合，该套件将为学生提供一个在系统层面思考的机会。他们将创建交互式雕塑机器人，并将系统思维与编程，工程和设计联系起来，所有这些都是以STEM为重点的未来的终身技能。该项目结合了无线通信，平板电脑和嵌入式微控制器技术，以融合在一个交互式系统上，用于指定响应，环境传感机器人的行为，然后将所产生的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，响应的机器人系统。机器人与机器人之间的通信使用网状网络实现，从而实现教室中机器人之间的传感器共享和动作同步。平板电脑屏幕上新设计的拖放编程界面演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。反馈控制系统规范直接传递到微处理器，反过来，使得机器人能够自主操作，而不需要一直使用专用的编程平板电脑。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实现一个可用的系统，该系统可以根据国内和国际需求进行大批量生产。这项工作的参与性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;以及在课堂上对具有原型的动手机器人活动进行形成性评估。该项目将直接导致桥梁产品的商业化，该产品将最终教育机器人工具包的功能与适用于小学教室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.