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Creating Hardware-Accessible Learning with the Robotarium and Block Coding

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Conference

2024 South East Section Meeting

Location

Marietta, Georgia

Publication Date

March 10, 2024

Start Date

March 10, 2024

End Date

March 12, 2024

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--45513

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/45513

Download Count

19

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Paper Authors

biography

Tyler Kinner Georgia Tech Research Institute

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Tyler Kinner is a Research Scientist II at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, where he works on projects related to STEM education, training, and workforce development.

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biography

Sean Wilson Georgia Institute of Technology

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Sean Wilson received the B.A. degree in physics and the B.A. degree in mathematics from the State University of New York College at Geneseo, Geneseo, NY, USA, in 2011, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, in 2017.

He is a Senior Research Engineer with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, where he has also served as a Postdoctoral Fellow. His research interests include the areas of remote access robotic hardware and control of multiagent robotic systems.

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Avaye Raj Dawadi

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Abstract

The Georgia Tech Robotarium is a remotely accessible swarm robotics research platform that is designed for open and free access to support a vision for "robotics for all". Users can submit experiments written in Python or MatLab for the Robotarium robots to perform, but after educator feedback, it was clear that a process that is friendlier to novice coders was needed for the Robotarium to be accessible for young coders. A partnership between STEM@GTRI and the GT Robotarium facilitated the development of a block-coding interface that allows users to assemble code that can be submitted to the Robotarium. Similar to popular block coding sites, such as Scratch, our block-coding interface allows students to code multiple robots without the need for sophisticated understanding of programming languages and their syntax.

This approach enables anyone to develop and deploy code to the Robotarium, where it can run on real-world hardware without the need for users to have the resources and time to secure and maintain their own. This is particularly notable for multiagent robotics, which would be likely unfeasible for most schools in the K12 setting to operate on their own. This paper describes the design, development, and initial piloting of the Robotarium Block Coding Interface with K12 audiences.

Kinner, T., & Wilson, S., & Dawadi, A. R. (2024, March), Creating Hardware-Accessible Learning with the Robotarium and Block Coding Paper presented at 2024 South East Section Meeting, Marietta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--45513

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