A Hands-on Middle-School Robotics Software Program at MIT

Abstract

Robotics competitions at the high school level attract a large number of students across the world. However, there is little emphasis on leveraging robotics to get middle school students excited about pursuing STEM education. In this paper, we describe a new program that targets middle school students in a local, four-week setting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It aims to excite students by teaching the very basics of computer vision and robotics. The students program mini car-like robots, equipped with state-of-theart computers, to navigate autonomously in a mock race track. We describe the hardware and software infrastructure that enables the program, the details of our curriculum, and the results of a short assessment. In addition, we describe four short programs, as well as a session where we teach high school teachers how to teach similar courses at their schools to their own students. The self-assessment indicates that the students feel more confident in programming and robotics after leaving the program, which we hope will enable them to pursue STEM education and robotics initiatives at school.

Augmented and Virtual Reality Experiences for Learning Robotics and Training Integrative Thinking Skills

“…Based on this experience, in the current study, we developed a new AR application that allows students to practice with a more complex and advanced RACECAR MN robot. The Rapid Autonomous Complex Environment Competing Ackermann steering Robot Model Nano (RACECAR MN) is an autonomous mini racecar (Figure 1) designed by the MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) program for teaching students the concepts and technologies of self-driving cars [36]. The rationale for developing the new AR application was to support experiential learning about RACECAR MN even when the physical robot is not accessible.…”