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Practice of School Education Using Micro Robots
Paper:
Practice of School Education Using Micro Robots andVerification 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: [email protected]
[Received February 18, 2011; accepted April 13, 2011]
This paper is to report on the practice of school edu-
cation using robots and verification of its effectiveness
held on the subject of assembly of robots with off-the-
shelf commodities which is mainly intended for ele-
mentary and middle school pupils. Use of micro robots
as teaching material in the classroom gave a great
number of pupils more opportunities to touch robotsand find fun in robots. In addition, questionnaire sur-
veys 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 field of education.
Keywords: education robot, micro robot, vibratory
mover mechanism, continuing learning
1. IntroductionAmidst a prevalent apprehension for an increasing
number of school children and pupils having a deterio-
rated interest toward science, the Japan Science and Tech-
nology 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 pro-
grams 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 asso-ciated with environmental issues such as methods to pu-
rify waste liquid, which are taught in cooperation with
engineers from industrial firms. The lecture we recently
gave on the subject of robot education were very popu-
lar 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 middleschools 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 con-
tinuous 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 Mea-
sures for Promotion of Robots sponsored by the Technol-
ogy Promotion Office, Division of Commerce and Indus-
try, Department of Industry of Shizuoka Prefecture, we
have reviewed difficulties that may be involved in intro-
duction of robots as teaching material or in continuous
practice of robot education. Such difficulties stem in part
from the fact that robot education at school depends heav-
ily on individuals who are familiar with robots and in part
from the fact that it is difficult to maintain robot educa-
tion activities at public schools where teachers are regu-
larly changed. In particular, compared with the middle
schools, elementary schools have no special teachers in
charge of a domestic science class, preventing continu-
ous robot education [4]. Many teachers in charge of robot
education have complained about insufficient budgets for
robot education, which poses another significant 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 ScienceEducation, 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 Y=341. This survey clearly shows that without a spe-
cial 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 ma-
terial will be very limited.
As one of the solutions to the above-mentioned prob-
lems, the authors propose to use as teaching material forrobot education at elementary and middle schools the mi-
Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.23 No.5, 2011 709
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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 Op-
portunities [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 ac-
tivities 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 severalpupils. We have also discussed with groups of incumbent
teachers the potentiality of small machines (micro robots)
as effective teaching material for robot education at ele-
mentary and middle schools.
2. Teaching Material Using Micro Robots As-
sembled with Off-the-Shelf Commodities
2.1. The Vibrating Motor Driven Micro Robot
Robots are generally defined as a system to sense ex-ternal environments and execute appropriate physical mo-
tions or tasks based on gained information. Previous
teaching materials for robot education have been devel-
oped based on this definition. On the other hand, micro
robots are extremely small in size, and high hopes are
pinned on their future use. These small robots are some-
times called nano robots, micro robots or mini robots, de-
pending 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.
Basic configurations of micro robots are expected to be
able to perform the following minimum functions: (1) todevelop 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. More-
over, the development of such micro robots would entail
much cost to use as teaching material for robot educa-
tion. 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 pur-
poses. Wheel motor driven actuators require special gears
manufactured by MEMS technologies in addition to a
large number of components. Piezoelectric actuators re-
quire special control circuits to drive piezoelectric ele-
ments. We have therefore decided to adopt, as a driv-
ing method for educational micro robots, vibratory loco-
motion mechanism which can be manufactured with af-
fordable vibrating motors that are relatively easy to pro-
cure. For the vibratory locomotion mechanism, we pro-
pose to use a transfer mechanism where a coreless micro
2.2
3.
3.1
Fig. 1. Basic component parts.
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, gen-
erating unbalanced thrust in the anterior-posterior direc-
tion.
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 hun-
dred 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 en-
sure continuity of robot education at school, although the
teaching material cost in the robot education class we or-
ganized was partly supported by the JST and others. The
maximum length of time available for robot education atschool would be two classes (90 min), which will just al-
low 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 cer-
tain school. These component parts, except for the vi-
brating motor which needs to be purchased from special
shops, are available either at home or at nearby do-it-
yourself stores and can be purchased for several hundred
yen through general marketing routes.
(1) Vibrating motor (disk-shaped vibrating motorFM34F) 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 administer-
ing robot education classes using micro robots as teach-
710 Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.23 No.5, 2011