26 February 2012
Based on the importance of Robotics in introducing the young students to engineering and motivating them to be involved in creating future technology, the Planetarium Science Center has launched the beginning of a Robotics educational program in 2012 which is organized and managed by the PSC staff in cooperation with Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport Technology/Regional Informatics Center (AASTMT/RIC) during summer vacation, midyear vacation, 1
st and 2
nd school semesters. Robotics allows young students to develop invaluable skills such as problem-solving, logical reasoning, critical thinking and creativity. The program will be composed of two main levels, conducted in the form of hands on workshops and scheduled to be running .
By the completion of these two levels, the PSC is planning to hold a robotics local competition in collaboration with AASTMT/RIC, by next October, which entails designing the competition rules; managing the Judging process; fully equipping the Exhibition areas to appropriately accommodate the local competition requirements and technical preparations of local competition winning team to participate at international competitions.
The two levels of the robotics program are as follows:
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Level one: students will learn how to Assemble the SumoBot, SumoBot Locomotion, SumoBot Sensors and Border Detection, Infrared Object Detection and Basic Competition Code.
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Level two: the general learning objectives of the level are:
- Rather than just letting students build any type of robot, trainers will give them a fun challenge which can serve as the inspiration behind the design of their robot as well as the focus of any program they make using a computer. This challenge could involve a race of some type, robots that use sensors to find something, a test of strength or building a robot that responds to some form of human input. As well as designing and building their robot, students will have to think about how they will program it as well.
- This project can be further developed into a great science fair project focusing on technology. student could research what kind of artificial intelligence his robot is capable of as well as any physical limitations it has that stop it from performing required tasks.