Work in Progress: Learning Fundamental Robotics Concepts Through Games at Bachelor Level

Abstract

Increasing amounts of robotics applications and possible job opportunities in the industry within the robotics field encourage more universities to involve robotics subject in their current programs or incorporate robotics engineering as a new department. This highlights the importance of comprehensible robotics teaching for more people with various levels of technical background. One of the major subjects at the university level in robotics education is representing the physical robot model using mathematical notations. The majority of the current teaching methods of robotics theory for undergraduate students use conventional approaches from robotics books which relies on 3D pictures and sketches for illustration. There are a few modern approaches where the book chapters are linked to supplemental videos, however, the lack of interaction diminishes the student engagement. Moreover, there are some simulators to enhance visual and interactive skills, but they are either costly or robot specific and require adequate competence of programming skills on the associated programming language. In this paper, a serious game to be used in robotics teaching for bachelor students with various technical backgrounds is presented. The game combines the traditional notations in robot modelling with a gamified approach so that the students can comprehend and imagine easier.