EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS THROUGH PRACTICAL EXPIRIENCE OF EUROBOT TEAMS

A.R.Efimov, I.A.Stolyarov, D.A. Egorov

EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS THROUGH PRACTICAL EXPIRIENCE OF EUROBOT TEAMS

SBERBANK ROBOTICS LABORATORY, SBERBANK of Russia, Moscow, robotics@sberbank.ru

Education along with health care are two areas of human activity whose value is constantly increasing. According to  the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics L.H Summers1, over the past 40 years college tuition fees have increased 140 times compared with the cost of consumer electronics, such as TVs.

    In other words, a multiple increase in the relative cost of education, accompanied by a decline in the cost of technology, creates at the same time the need for increasing the  education’s availability and the ability to provide this availibity through technology.

Another factor in the modern education’s development is the transition to life-learning education  (learning during almost the entire human life ).First of all, this relates to the education in the field of technology, as the rapid change of  technology generations compels all categories of workers to constantly retrain, not only by improvingthe qualification, but also by changing it.

       In a wide sense  educational technologies can be used in two ways:

         1) transfer of traditional educational content to the audience. For example, the use of VR/AR technology in a biology class at school offers a new method of learning in adapting traditional knowledge that has been available to students for decades.

        2) technological skills development for the implementation of product specific prototypes, proof of scientific hypotheses, analysis and data synthesis. For example, creating a unique robot that performs  in offline mode a sequence of actions that can dynamically change depending on environmental conditions. This type of training is known as the “project approach”.

    In our opinion, the transfer approach (1) is not sufficient for a modern  knowledge-hungry economy. In particular, a survey conducted by the WEF2(World Economic Forum) showed that employers will demand from employees following skills:

1.     Complex problem solving

2.     Critical thinking

3.     Creativity

4.     People Management

5.     Coordinating with others

6.     Emotional Intelligence

7.     Judgement and decision making

8.     Service orientation

9.     Negotiation

10.  Cognitive flexibility

The authors of this article believe that the approach (2) to the modern technologiesdevelopment is possible in conditions of limited availability of funds and teachers of high qualification. This approach helps students and learners to form a good basis for difficult skills along with the highest skills in these 10 top skills that WEF experts acquire for future generations.

Technologies themselves become a learning tool. Competitive educational robotics in unique educational technologies, where members of a t student team  work in groups to create reliable and smart robots, capable of solving real-world tasks. Also, the competitive nature makes such an approach to learning more attractive for young talents and sponsors.

In our laboratory, we study how Eurobot competitions help students develop critical skills (WEF). The table below shows our observation and interrelation of skills in teams during the preparation of Eurobot and during the competitions themselves. Our field research includes quantitative interviews with Eurobot (robotics) team.

Critical skills

 in Educational robotics

Complex problem solving

Robotics need to evaluate a very diverse set of trial and error with problems in three areas: design and design, software and electronics.

Critical thinking

Roboticists need to sort out opinions of own team members along with mentors and experts. Everyone can be wrong. Finding right answer is key question.

Creativity

Roboticists meet very many engineering constrains like size of robots, time, cost and others. Finding solution out these constrains is very challenging.

People Management

A team of one person has no chance of winning. Successful robotic teams have more than 6 members. Therefore, team leaders and mentors must demonstrate a very good  people management skills.

Coordinating with others

Team leaders coordinate multiple tasks, one of which is finding financial sponsors to support their teams.

Emotional Intelligence

Teams are very loosely to manage, so team leaders have no financial instruments of punishment / reward. The only way to control -  is to convince the team.

Judgement and decision making

Each team member must make bold and fast decisions based on many variables and dimensions. 

Service orientation

Service orientation is something that teaches team members to be very useful to each other.

Negotiation

Antagonism between competing teams is very hard. So fair play is key paradigm of engineering competitions. However, misunderstandings still occur. Team members must seek negotiations with others who show different opinions.

Cognitive flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is something to be featured in every challenge. Teams follow simple but winning strategies, changing their approach according constrains, adversaries and achived results. 

1.      Lawerence H. Summers, Economic Possibilities for our children, NBER Reporter, 2013 Number 4

2.      Melanie Curtin, The 10 Top Skills That Will Land You High-paying Jobs by 2020, According to the World Economic Forum 

1Lawerence H. Summers, Economic Possibilities for our children, NBER Reporter, 2013 Number 4

2Melanie Curtin, The 10 Top Skills That Will Land You.