Educational robotics

Educational robotics is a broad term that refers to a collection of activities, instructional programs, physical platforms, educational resources and pedagogical philosophy.

The primary of objective of educational robotics is to provide a set of experience to facilitate the student's development of knowledge, skills and attitudes for the design, analysis, application and operation of robots. The term robot here is used quite broadly and may include articulated robots, mobile robots or autonomous vehicles of any scale. The rigor of the approach can be scaled based on the background of the target audience and may be suitable for students across the entire educational spectrum—from elementary school or graduate programs.

An alternate, or secondary, objective is to use robotics as a tangible and exciting application to motivate and facilitate the instruction other, often foundational, topics such as computer programming, artificial intelligence or engineering design.

Robotics engineers design robots, maintain them, develop new applications for them, and conduct research to expand the potential of robotics. Robots have become a popular educational tool in some middle and high schools, as well as in numerous youth summer camps, raising interest in programming, artificial intelligence and robotics among students. First-year computer science courses at several universities now include programming of a robot in addition to traditional software engineering-based coursework.

Since 2014, companies like Cytron Technologies has been making inroads into schools and learning centers with their rero reconfigurable robot. Designed to be easy and safe to assemble and easy to program, robotics became very accessible to young children with no programming skills and even up to advance users at tertiary level. Robotics education was heavily promoted via roadshows, science fairs, exhibitions, workshops, camps and co-sponsored classes, bringing robotics education to the masses.

From approximately 1960 though 2005, robotics education at post-secondary institutions took place through elective courses, thesis experiences and design projects offered as part of degree programs in traditional academic disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering or computer science.

Since 2005, more universities have begun granting degrees in robotics as a discipline in its own right, often under the name "Robotic Engineering". Based on a 2015 web-based survey of robotics educators, the degree programs and their estimates annual graduates are listed alphabetically below. Note that only official degree programs where the word "robotics" appears on the transcript or diploma are listed here; whereas degree programs in traditional disciplines with course concentrations or thesis topics related to robotics are deliberately omitted.

The Robotics Certification Standards Alliance (RCSA) is an international robotics certification authority that confers various industry- and educational-related robotics certifications.

...
Wikipedia