SBIR Phase II: RoboEngineers

SBIR 第二阶段：RoboEngineers

• 批准号: 1853206
• 负责人: Daniel White
• 金额: $ 73.31万
• 依托单位: Filament Games, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-04-01 至 2022-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1853206&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; RoboEngineers

This SBIR Phase II project is a game-based learning virtual reality (VR) and desktop experience focused on fostering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and robotics interest in young people. The project's intent is to address the growing skilled labor shortage in STEM fields and prepare learners for the cross-industrial rise of robotics. Through exposure to experiential STEM learning, the project will create a groundswell of student interest and aptitude that will help close STEM workforce gaps in the long term, as well as plant the seeds for a future cohort of robotics professionals. The project's hypothesis is that its game-based VR-enhanced learning platform can reliably instill design/engineering thinking skills into learners while exceeding the capabilities of existing educational tools in terms of scalability and adaptability to student needs. The project is additionally intended to drive K-12 VR hardware adoption by providing a compelling and teacher-customizable solution that will justify institutional hardware investments. When proven scalable, the project will act as a beachhead for other VR and game-based learning entrants to bring their own innovative learning content into the K-12 ecosystem, simultaneously promoting the progress of science in alignment with the NSF's mission, as well as providing a broad economic lift to the American economy by unlocking a new market sector. As a VR-first experience, this project will provide students with a first-of-its-kind immersive robotics sandbox that allows for hands-on experimentation. Players will be able to form hypotheses, build robots, test, and iterate, mirroring the processes of project-based robotics and maker programs. Beyond robot construction, the project will offer challenge courses that test players' ability to build to specification. Each course will require a different physics-based solution for which a capable robot must be constructed. For example, a course might challenge players to navigate a set of stationary obstacles and then place a cube on a pressure plate, requiring a robot with maneuverability and the ability to pick up, transport, and place objects. This task serves as a model of the underlying dynamics of engineering design: identifying a problem, thinking critically, and developing a solution engineered specifically to that problem. To establish this project in the larger context of teaching media, it will be developed as a desktop-only intervention, a VR-only intervention, a desktop/VR hybrid intervention, and a paper-based control intervention. These variants will be tested with middle school and high school end users to verify the efficacy of game-based VR as a pedagogy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个SBIR第二阶段项目是一个基于游戏的学习虚拟现实（VR）和桌面体验，专注于培养年轻人对STEM（科学，技术，工程和数学）和机器人的兴趣。该项目的目的是解决STEM领域日益严重的熟练劳动力短缺问题，并为机器人技术的跨行业崛起做好准备。通过体验式STEM学习，该项目将激发学生的兴趣和能力，这将有助于长期缩小STEM劳动力缺口，并为未来的机器人专业人员群体播下种子。该项目的假设是，其基于游戏的VR增强型学习平台可以可靠地向学习者灌输设计/工程思维技能，同时在可扩展性和适应学生需求方面超越现有教育工具的能力。该项目还旨在通过提供令人信服的教师可定制解决方案来推动K-12 VR硬件的采用，这将证明机构硬件投资的合理性。当证明可扩展时，该项目将作为其他VR和基于游戏的学习进入者的滩头阵地，将他们自己的创新学习内容带入K-12生态系统，同时促进科学进步与NSF的使命保持一致，并通过解锁新的市场部门为美国经济提供广泛的经济提升。作为VR优先体验，该项目将为学生提供首创的沉浸式机器人沙盒，允许进行动手实验。玩家将能够形成假设，构建机器人，测试和验证，反映基于项目的机器人和制造商程序的过程。除了机器人建造，该项目还将提供挑战课程，测试玩家按照规格建造的能力。每门课程都需要一个不同的基于物理的解决方案，为此必须建造一个有能力的机器人。例如，一个课程可能会挑战玩家通过一组固定的障碍物，然后将一个立方体放在压力板上，这需要一个具有机动性和拾取，运输和放置物体能力的机器人。这项任务作为工程设计的基本动力学模型：识别问题，批判性思考，并开发专门针对该问题的解决方案。为了在教学媒体的更大背景下建立这个项目，它将被开发为仅桌面干预，仅VR干预，桌面/VR混合干预和基于纸张的控制干预。这些变体将与初中和高中的最终用户进行测试，以验证基于游戏的VR作为教学方法的有效性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。