Practice of School Education Using Micro Robots

Paper:

Practice of School Education Using Micro Robots and Verication of its Effectiveness
Daigo Misaki and Koichi Arai
Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Kogakuin University 1-24-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-8677, Japan E-mail: misaki@cc.kogakuin.ac.jp [Received February 18, 2011; accepted April 13, 2011]

This paper is to report on the practice of school education using robots and verication of its effectiveness held on the subject of assembly of robots with off-theshelf commodities which is mainly intended for elementary and middle school pupils. Use of micro robots as teaching material in the classroom gave a great number of pupils more opportunities to touch robots and nd fun in robots. In addition, questionnaire surveys conducted on incumbent teachers who attended the lecture at Kogakuin University have proved it very useful to analyze educational robots which meet the needs in the eld of education.

Keywords: education robot, micro robot, vibratory mover mechanism, continuing learning

1. Introduction
Amidst a prevalent apprehension for an increasing number of school children and pupils having a deteriorated interest toward science, the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) has launched, since the latter half of the 2000s, a variety of support programs for science and mathematics education at elementary and middle schools. These include Science Corabo Teacher (SCOT) [1] and Science Partnership Project (SPP) [2]. Such support programs for science education at nationwide elementary and middle schools widely range from the learning contained in the curriculum synopsis such as observation of plants and action of electric current to the social problems associated with environmental issues such as methods to purify waste liquid, which are taught in cooperation with engineers from industrial rms. The lecture we recently gave on the subject of robot education were very popular with the current generation of pupils, as many of them still well remember the robots which were displayed at the 2005 World Exposition held in Aichi Prefecture; it is no wonder that so many pupils, a few times more than the capacity of the classroom, applied for admission to the lecture. Typical examples of teaching materials using robots which have been introduced in elementary and middle schools in Japan include the materials using the Lego

MindStorms or other educational robot kits [3] from Tamiya Inc. and others. These teaching materials are either used for science education on robots as a part of the education curriculum or for preparation to take part in robot contests among school children and pupils such as the Robo Cup Soccer Junior, contributing greatly to continuous improvements in pupils motivation for learning. The authors have practiced education using robots as a material in the SCOT Project and the Science Avenue Project in cooperation with Hamamatsu Science Museum and Hamamatsu Culture Foundation, both of which are mainly intended for elementary and middle school pupils. Furthermore, as a member of the Council to Study Measures for Promotion of Robots sponsored by the Technology Promotion Ofce, Division of Commerce and Industry, Department of Industry of Shizuoka Prefecture, we have reviewed difculties that may be involved in introduction of robots as teaching material or in continuous practice of robot education. Such difculties stem in part from the fact that robot education at school depends heavily on individuals who are familiar with robots and in part from the fact that it is difcult to maintain robot education activities at public schools where teachers are regularly changed. In particular, compared with the middle schools, elementary schools have no special teachers in charge of a domestic science class, preventing continuous robot education [4]. Many teachers in charge of robot education have complained about insufcient budgets for robot education, which poses another signicant problem to be addressed to ensure continuity in robot education. According to the survey on junior high school teachers conducted in 2008 by the Center for Promotion of Science Education, Japan Science and Technology Agency [5], average costs for facilities and equipment per school was = Y 154,000 and average supplies expenses per school was = Y 116,000; average costs for facilities and equipment per pupil was = Y 453 and average supplies expenses per pupil was = Y341. This survey clearly shows that without a special budget, it would be practically impossible to give robot education at school and that the number of pupils who will have opportunities to use robots as teaching material will be very limited. As one of the solutions to the above-mentioned problems, the authors propose to use as teaching material for robot education at elementary and middle schools the mi-

Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.23 No.5, 2011

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Misaki, D. and Arai, K.

cro robots that we have developed. Micro robots were advocated by the concept of Small Machines, Large Opportunities [6] at the NSF Workshop 1988 and since then many researchers have been engaged in the study of micro robots. In this paper, we will report on the education activities using as teaching material such micro robots that can be assembled with generally available commodities within limited budgets by one pupil or a group of several pupils. We have also discussed with groups of incumbent teachers the potentiality of small machines (micro robots) as effective teaching material for robot education at elementary and middle schools.

3.

Fig. 1. Basic component parts.

2. Teaching Material Using Micro Robots Assembled with Off-the-Shelf Commodities

2.1. The Vibrating Motor Driven Micro Robot
Robots are generally dened as a system to sense external environments and execute appropriate physical motions or tasks based on gained information. Previous teaching materials for robot education have been developed based on this denition. On the other hand, micro robots are extremely small in size, and high hopes are pinned on their future use. These small robots are sometimes called nano robots, micro robots or mini robots, depending on the sizes. Micro robots would rather more often collectively refer to small robots of sizes that can be put in the hand palm. In our research, too, robots that can be put in the palm are referred to as micro robots. 2.2 Basic congurations of micro robots are expected to be able to perform the following minimum functions: (1) to develop some driving forces with micro actuators; (2) to mount sensors to enable autonomous motions based on external information; and (3) to execute some meaningful tasks through operation of manipulators [7]. Currently, no micro robots have yet been developed that could perform all of these three minimum functions as well as have energy sources built in the robots. Moreover, the development of such micro robots would entail much cost to use as teaching material for robot education. We have therefore decided that robots to be used as teaching material should be able to perform at least the above-mentioned minimum functions (1) and (2). Typical actuators used in micro robots include: (1) wheel motor driven actuators; (2) piezoelectric actuators; (3) electromagnetic actuators for vibratory locomotion / jumping mechanism. Their use depends on intended purposes. Wheel motor driven actuators require special gears manufactured by MEMS technologies in addition to a large number of components. Piezoelectric actuators require special control circuits to drive piezoelectric elements. We have therefore decided to adopt, as a driving method for educational micro robots, vibratory locomotion mechanism which can be manufactured with affordable vibrating motors that are relatively easy to procure. For the vibratory locomotion mechanism, we propose to use a transfer mechanism where a coreless micro 710

motor with an eccentric weight and two button cells are mounted, as well as the sloped bottom of the robot [8]. The transfer system is such that the vibratory locomotion mechanism moves up and down as the motor rotates, generating unbalanced thrust in the anterior-posterior direction.
3.1

2.2. Component Parts Micro robots to be used as teaching material at schools are of simple structure so that any pupil participating in the robot education class can assemble a set of robot by him/herself. In view of the limited budget of several hundred yen available for the teaching materials at elementary and middle schools, it would be desirable that such micro robots could be assembled within the school budget to ensure continuity of robot education at school, although the teaching material cost in the robot education class we organized was partly supported by the JST and others. The maximum length of time available for robot education at school would be two classes (90 min), which will just allow as much as 30 min for assembly of robots if some length of time is set aside for explanations and mini-robot contests. Figure 1 shows a set of component parts which were distributed to pupils in the robot education class at a certain school. These component parts, except for the vibrating motor which needs to be purchased from special shops, are available either at home or at nearby do-ityourself stores and can be purchased for several hundred yen through general marketing routes.
(1) Vibrating motor (disk-shaped vibrating motor FM34F) 1 pc (2) Toothbrush 1 pc (3) Button cell (miniature cell like LR44) 2 pc (4) Switch (vertical slide switch SS-12SDP2) 1 pc (5) Wiring cable 23 pc

3. Practice of Robot Education Classes

This section describes the methods for administering robot education classes using micro robots as teachJournal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.23 No.5, 2011