Robotics as multi-disciplinary learning: a summer course perspective

Abstract

This paper describes a two-month summer intensive course designed to introduce participants with a hands-on technical craft on robotics and to acquire experience in the lowlevel details of embedded systems. Attendants started this course with a brief introduction to robotics; learned to draw, design and create a personalized 3D structure for their mobile robotic platform and developed skills in embedded systems. They were familiarize with the practices used in robotics, learning to connect all sensors and actuator, developing a typical application on differential kinematic using Arduino, exploring ROS features under Raspberry Pi environment and Arduino — Raspberry Pi communication. Different paradigms and some real applications and programming were addressed on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. This paper describes not just the concept, layout and methodology used on RobotCraft 2017 but also presents the participants knowledge background and their overall opinions, leading to focus on lessons learned and suggestions for future editions.