SEPTEMBER 2005 IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 15

Encouraging Robotics to Take Root

Paolo Fiorini, University of VeronaChair, RAS Education Committee

Grass-roots robotics is a phenomenon of unexpectedproportions, at least for somebody who is just start-ing to explore it. Grass-roots robotics is robotics

used in primary and secondary schools as a new tool forteaching science and the humanities. High school teachers inaffluent Western societies are eager to find new ways tomotivate pupils to study, and robotics is an intriguing mix oftheoretical and practical experience, which captivates them.Furthermore, robotics as a teaching tool has sound pedagog-ical bases, going back to the educational principles derivedfrom Jean Piaget’s theories of cognitive development (1966)as revised by Seymour Papert (1986). Confucius indicated in500 B.C. that the key to real learning is the physical andemotional involvement of pupils in the learning process,similar to what occurs, for example, when they play videogames. Robotics offers the advantage of providing a tridi-mensional environment for this involvement, in addition tothe possibility of carrying out games and competitions(again, as in video games). In these situations, pupils’ learn-ing is stimulated by their active role in the education processthrough the manipulation and construction of objects.

At least in Italy, although I am sure that the same obser-vation would apply to many other nations, there is a largenumber of teachers who have discovered the surprisingpotential of robotics in education and have included someform of robotics laboratory in their school curricula. I sawfirsthand the enthusiasm towards robotics a few weeks agowhen I attended the kickoff meeting of “Robots at School,”a project sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Education.This project aims at fostering some cooperation among afew schools involved in robotics and possibly promotingsharing of curricular material and resources. The Robots atSchool project was born after the successful completion of aEuropean project called EduRobot (http://www.scuoladiro-botica.it/EduRobot.htm), which involved students from 30high schools in seven European countries in the design, fab-rication, and competition of mobile robots. The good resultsand the visibility achieved by the project prompted theorganizers of the Scuola di Robotica in Genova to propose anational project to the Education Ministry, which funded itand prompted its start on 17 June 2005. The coordinatingpartner of the project is the High School Severi(http://www. itiseveri.it/) in Padova, Italy, which hasaccomplished several robotic projects in past years.

The teachers attending the meeting had the opportunity tomeet each other, some for the first time, and present their workand teaching approach to the audience. In the ensuing discus-sion, some of the long-standing certainties about robotics in

high school were criticized and disproved. Among the issuesdiscussed were: robotics should be taught as an example of inte-gration between mechanics, electronics, and computer science,and robotics cannot be properly tuned to the age of the pupils.However, the experience brought to the meeting showed thatrobotics is more than just the sum of all three disciplines. Stu-dents personally take up their own learning process and aremuch more aware than their teachers of the interaction amongthe disciplines. Students stop being passive targets of teachingmethods and become active learning subjects, showing initia-tive, independence, and a drastic reduction in their learningtime. Similarly, age and school grade have little to do with astudent’s ability to solve a robotics problem. Critical elementsin achieving good solutions are team composition, with a bal-anced mix of intuition, analysis, abstraction, and implementa-tion skills, and the ability to collaborate effectively within theteam. It turns out that employing robotics as a teaching tool, orperhaps as the main tool, achieves a deep change in the studentsby modifying their attitude towards learning, and studentsbecome active seekers of knowledge, rather than passivelyabsorbing carefully prepared and measured lectures.

Finally, in support of these statements, it is worth mention-ing two significant experiences: the projects developed at theOmar high school (http://www.itiomar.it/pubblica/proget-ti/Prog%20omarobot.pdf ) in northern Italy and those at theMonaco high school (http://www.itimonaco. cs.it/inglese/)in southern Italy. It is interesting to point out that the cultur-al and economic backgrounds of the students attending thetwo schools are very different: the first is at the center ofItaly’s industrial area, the second at the center of a mostlyagricultural region. Yet, the results displayed by the twoteachers at the meeting were equally interesting and of highquality. The first school presented the OmaRobot project,aimed at developing a small robot for outdoor surveillancetasks. Clearly, together with technical competences, the stu-dents had to study the problems of guaranteeing security,protecting privacy, and respecting the relevant laws. At theMonaco high school, the robotics laboratory was opened tostudents of middle schools to involve them in projects thatcould spur their interest in technical subjects.

The spectrum of approaches to introduce robotics inmiddle and high schools is extremely diversified and theresults may be as well. It will be useful to the roboticscommunity at large to read reports on these activities and tocompare and contrast the different experiences around theworld. For these reasons I invite colleagues aware of similarexperiences to send in a brief report, which we will presentto the community.

E D U C A T I O N