A Robotic Hand Starter Kit Workshop in Partnership With a Public School

Abstract

The absence of women in hard sciences in Brazil is a reality. The scenario is similar at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), one of the most renomade institutions of higher education in Brazil. The bioengineering group was one of the initiatives inside the STEM2D project. This paper presents a part of our work, the development of a complete project for high school students. Mainly, the project aimed to encourage and engage girls in STEM careers by building multidisciplinary skills and bioengineering knowledge in high school. In four sessions, undergraduate and graduate students from ITA and public school teachers conducted the activities to assemble the robotic hand with the students. The chosen activity was a robotic hand, initially proposed by Microsoft, with some modifications in order to reduce costs and also enable the assembling in a short time. The developed resources were made publicly available for reapplication. Through this material we expect to contribute to science dissemination and a major student's engagement in STEM careers especially the female students.