SBIR Phase II: RoboEngineers

SBIR第二期项目是一个基于游戏的虚拟现实（VR）学习和桌面体验，专注于培养年轻人对STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）和机器人技术的兴趣。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，并为跨行业兴起的机器人技术做好准备。通过接触体验式STEM学习，该项目将激发学生的兴趣和才能，从长远来看，这将有助于缩小STEM劳动力缺口，并为未来的机器人专业人才群体埋下种子。该项目的假设是，其基于游戏的vr增强学习平台可以可靠地向学习者灌输设计/工程思维技能，同时在可扩展性和对学生需求的适应性方面超越现有教育工具的能力。该项目还旨在通过提供一个引人注目的、教师可定制的解决方案来推动K-12 VR硬件的采用，这将证明机构硬件投资的合理性。当被证明可扩展时，该项目将成为其他VR和基于游戏的学习进入者的滩头堡，将他们自己的创新学习内容带入K-12生态系统，同时促进与NSF使命一致的科学进步，并通过释放新的市场部门为美国经济提供广泛的经济提升。作为vr先行体验，该项目将为学生提供首个沉浸式机器人沙盒，允许动手实验。玩家将能够形成假设，建造机器人，测试和迭代，反映基于项目的机器人和创客程序的过程。除了建造机器人，该项目还将提供挑战课程，测试玩家按照规格建造的能力。每门课程都需要不同的基于物理的解决方案，为此必须构建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系列固定的障碍，然后将一个立方体放置在一个压力板上，这就要求机器人具有机动性和拾取、运输和放置物体的能力。这项任务作为工程设计的潜在动态模型：识别问题，批判性地思考，并针对该问题开发解决方案。为了在更大的教学媒体背景下建立这个项目，它将被开发为纯桌面干预、纯虚拟现实干预、桌面/虚拟现实混合干预和基于纸张的控制干预。这些变体将在初中和高中终端用户中进行测试，以验证基于游戏的VR作为一种教学方法的有效性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.