Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
DOI 10.1007/s10846-015-0203-5
in a workshop. The robot is built using low-cost materials and the students customize their own design over
the different phases of the workshop. Once the activity is completed, every team understands that with
teamwork, effort and a good working strategy, every
problem can be overcome.
Keywords Increasing interest for engineering
Hands-on experimentation Project-based learning
Underwater Robots.
1 Introduction
A. El-Fakdi ()
Control Engineering and Intelligent Systems Group eXiT,
University of Girona,
Campus Montilivi Building PIV, 17071 Girona, Spain
e-mail: elfakdi@gmail.com
X. Cufi N. Hurtos
Computer Vision and Robotics Group VICOROB,
University of Girona,
Campus Montilivi Building PIV, 17071 Girona, Spain
X. Cufi
e-mail: xavier.cufi@udg.edu
N. Hurtos
e-mail: tali@silver.udg.edu
M. Correa
Pediatric Unit, Girona University Hospital Dr. Josep Trueta,
Av. de Franca, s/n, 17007 Girona, Spain
e-mail: montsecoar@gmail.com
of recreational nature that are attractive for students. Thus, the team-based underwater robot building
project was born.
The primary goal of the activity is to increase student competencies and their interest in technology by
mixing learning and entertainment in a senior research
atmosphere. As depicted in Fig. 1, the advantages
of such an activity are numerous. Working directly
with experts at their laboratories makes really a difference in terms of student motivation and eagerness
to learn. During the workshop, secondary school students and senior researchers cohabitate for some time
in a learning experience. Through creating this atmosphere that makes the students feel determined to
learn, engineering questions are better answered if the
student directly puts his hands into the problem [3,
10]. Also, this interaction with senior faculty members makes engineering concepts more tangible, more
understandable and more related to applications [8].
The competencies acquired by the students during the
workshop are transversal and related with the right
utilization of professional tools, the manipulation of
various materials, teamwork capabilities, and work
organization. Also, more specific competencies are
acquired: electric circuits design and implementation,
basic control theory, marine/underwater engineering
and physics concepts like buoyancy, action/reaction or
hydrodynamics among others.
The activity presented in this article, inspired on
the ideas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) SeaPearch [2, 9] has been designed
for students from 12- to 16-years-old, and its aim
is to increase the demand for engineering degrees.
In the Spanish secondary education system (from
12 to 16-years-old), the students start taking decisions regarding their careers at the age of 16. If
they choose to continue their studies at a University
level, they must overcome a pre-University two-year
course known as Batxillerat. This course can be
scientific/engineering or arts focused. The underwater robotics workshop presented here has its focus
in secondary level students who have not taken a
decision yet. We want to arise their interest for
engineering careers so they may choose the scientific/engineering path for their pre-university 2-year
course. Once inside the gap between 16 and 18-yearsold, our research group offers other activities and
courses related with robot programming and advanced
robots construction specially designed for students
who have already selected the scientific/engineering
path.
The VICOROB has conditioned a fully equipped
experimentation laboratory (see Fig. 2). The robot is
fully built by a team of 3-4 secondary school students
(the maximum number of participants is 24 students,
which would build 6 underwater robot prototypes).
There is an academic for every 8 pupils. The workshop finalizes with the students showing their ability
to teleoperate it and to execute underwater challenging operations that are realistic approaches to real
missions developed by the real Remotely Operated
Vehicle (ROVs). Some of these missions can only
be accomplished by following collaborative strategies
using more than one vehicle. The robot prototype is
built using low-cost materials, with a total cost not
exceeding 80 Euros. Another important purpose of
this activity is to introduce the students into the correct and safe utilization of standard professional tools,
as the activity includes nail, glue, crew, paint, weld,
cut, drill, melt and more (see Fig. 3). Thus, qualified personnel gives the students a detailed speech
about the risks of inadequate use of the laboratory
equipments and the breach of the mandatory safety
measures. Moreover, the students receive a basic first
aid tutorial with instructions about what to do during
the first steps of an unfortunate accident within the
lab.
The article is organized as follows. The workshop
carried out by the students is described in Section 2.
Next, the results and impressions of all the workshops
performed are presented in Section 3. Finally, conclusions on the overall results and the future work
planned are provided in Section 4.
Module One
Module Two
Module Three
First Contact 10
Presentation 10
Facility Visit 40
Group Making 30
Console Construction 60
Chassis Construction 60
Building Test wires 30
Console Customization 30
Wires Preparation 45
Working Time 5h15
Console Wiring 90
Sealing the motors 90
Attaching propellers 30
Fixing motors to chassis 30
Building umbilical 45
Checking Connections 30
Buoyancy 45
Missions 150
and closeness are a must. Professors try to encourage motivation and to create a positive atmosphere,
which always helps when starting to work with an
unknown group of pupils. As stated in [1], every
learning process concerns normally with an emotional domain where the pupils play a fundamental
role. The objective of these minutes is to make the
pupils feel comfortable and confident, establishing a
bidirectional communication loop among all them. A
multimedia presentation is given next, accompanied
with individual documentation of the whole activity. An accurate temporization of the workshop and
the planning strategy are described, showing the different parts of the submarine and the tools used to
build them. Safety advices about tools and their correct utilization receive a special attention during all
the presentation. It is also very important to remark
that the safety elements (protective goggles, gloves,
aprons, etc.) are as important as the tools. Moreover,
students are also instructed to follow adequate security protocols and behave accordingly. On the other
hand, and as stated at the beginning of this section,
the students are divided into groups of 3-4 pupils.
In order to build a balanced teamwork, the students
are accurately grouped. For this purpose, an individual questionnaire is filled in by every student [7].
This questionnaire describes their working profiles
and capabilities, providing the basis to group balanced
working teams. The final presentation aims to promote
the research done at the VICOROB. The objective is
to awake the students interest in the engineering field.
The numerous industrial applications around underwater technology, such as environmental monitoring,
oceanographic research or maintenance/monitoring
of underwater structures are presented to the
pupils.
2.2 Module One: Teleoperation Console and Vehicle
Chassis
The first task of the students is to build the teleoperation unit illustrated in Fig. 4a. The console is
made out of wood. Students must assemble the spare
parts using wood glue and nails. It requires about 1
hour cutting the spare wood parts, making the needed
holes on it and assembling the whole console. While
the pupils wait for the glue to dry, they can start
constructing the vehicles chassis (Fig. 4b). The structure is made of PVC pipes of different lengths linked
together by means of T, 90 and 45 PVC connectors. Students measure and cut all the pipes using the
appropriate tools. The chassis, once finished, is used
as a starting point to explain and understand the
dynamics and force-torque vectors acting on an underwater vehicle.
The next step would be to start with the electrical
connections. The pupils complete the first module task
plan by mounting all the connection wires that will be
needed for the console. The students must attach faston connectors to each cable edge, leaving the wire set
ready for the next module. By this time, the wooded
console is ready to be polished and painted. The students can feel free to decorate and customize their
teleoperation units as they like, since design skills
and artistic creativity are completely compatible with
engineering.
2.3 Module Two: Console Wiring and Motor
Encapsulation
The second module starts with the activity of wiring
the console. With all the right wires prepared from
the previous day, the students must assemble three DC
motor polarity inversion circuits. The correct interpretation of the circuit schematics is crucial to succeed.
This phase is closely guided by the teachers, since the
students initiate themselves experiencing with electric components. As soon as the circuit schematics
have been empirically derived, the next step is to
transfer the assembly to the teleoperation console, as
shown in Fig. 5a. Each motor circuit is verified independently. With the installation of the push-buttons
and the joystick, the teleoperation unit is finally completed. In order to prepare the motors to be submerged,
the next step is to seal them with standard wax to
make them watertight. For that purpose, the delicate
parts of the motors are first covered with electric
tape and thermal adhesive. Also, the motor shaft and
the frontal plane of the motor are generously covered with petroleum jelly to prevent water coming
inside the motor through the shaft. Then, the motor
is introduced into a cylindrical plastic cannister. Students have to drill a small hole at the bottom of
the case for the motor shaft. Subsequently, the case
is filled with melted wax. After a short period of
time, when the wax hardens, we obtain a solid sealed
motor with only a shaft and 2 wires coming out, see
Fig. 5b.
The missions often require specific teleoperation techniques and collaborative work with other vehicles.
A first introductory mission consists on the ROV
being teleoperated through a submerged gate. Different gates of different sizes have been constructed.
They are located at various depths to test the skills
of the pupils. A second mission asks the students to
recover lost objects from the pool floor. The objects
are metallic and the vehicle is attached with an electromagnet. The students control the electromagnet with
an extra button attached to the console. All the recovered objects are placed in a storage container. As can
be seen in Fig. 7, this container needs to be designed
and built taking into account the purpose of the mission, the position of the objects to be recovered and
the weight of these objects. Once all the objects have
been placed in the container, it returns to the surface
by inflating an auxiliary deposit with air from the surface (the students bring one of their robots with a
compressed air hose and inflate the deposit). The final
and most complex mission needs the utilization of two
ROV. The first ROV is equipped with an underwater
camera; the second mounts an extended hook. Both
vehicles have to work together in order to release the
buoyant equipment, while one vehicle keeps the oper-
ation area within the image plane, the other one uses
the hook to release the buoyant element so it can return
to the surface to be recovered by the surface team.
Figure 8 shows different vehicles performing various
set of missions.
Fig. 8 a Navigate the ROV through a gate. b Recuperation of lost objects. c Buoyant sensor liberation
Secondary School
Students
Robots
Format (1/3Days)
Nov 2008
Des 2009
Jan 2010
Nov 2010
Des 2010
Mar 2011
Apr 2011
May 2011
Jun 2011
Des 2011
Feb 2012
Apr 2012
May 2012
May 2012
Dec 2012
Dec 2012
May 2013
Jun 2013
Dec 2013
Mar 2014
May 2014
Total
IES Celra
IES A. Deulofeu
IES Castell Estela
Labour School
IES A. Deulofeu (2nd)
St. George School
IES Vilamajor
Escola Reguissol
IES Font del Ferro
IES A. Deulofeu (3rd)
Bell Lloc del Pla
IES Santa Coloma Farners
IES Celra (2nd)
St. George School (2nd)
IES Santa Eugenia
IES A. Deulofeu (4th)
St. George School (3rd)
IES Ridaura
IES A. Deulofeu (5th)
Bell Lloc del Pla (2nd)
IES Lluis Domenech
20
26
26
10
25
12
21
17
19
16
8
10
10
10
16
19
15
24
16
8
24
352
2
5
5
2
4
4
5
4
3
4
4
2
3
3
4
5
4
5
4
2
6
80
1
3
3
3
3
1
3
3
1
3
1
1
1
1
3
3
1
3
3
1
1
Q1
4.11
0.79
Q11
3.50
1.00
Q21
4.17
0.74
Q2
3.33
0.70
Q12
3.47
0.73
Q3
4.17
0.55
Q13
3.83
0.78
Q4
4.50
0.61
Q14
3.28
0.72
Q5
4.72
0.46
Q15
4.11
0.99
Q6
4.70
0.42
Q16
4.33
0.88
Q7
2.88
0.83
Q17
4.61
0.60
Q8
3.35
0.69
Q18
4.89
0.20
Q9
3.00
0.89
Q19
4.33
0.59
Q10
2.94
1.12
Q20
4.33
0.59
which learning is achieved. The responses and feedback from students served not only to evaluate the
performance of the result of the activity (to have the
possibility to use the underwater vehicle) in adding
to the students learning process, but also as feedback
for future fine-tuning of the different phases as pedagogical learning tools. The comments and impressions
provided by the involved students are very rewarding and, more importantly, the workshop has proved
to promote engineering skills and scientific methodologies among young students. The ideas reported by
the pupils in the questionnaire have been a key factor to adapt and improve the activity from its initial
idea. A lot of aspects and details have been carried
out; the changes focus on the way we introduce theoretical concepts, workshop schedule optimization and
improvements in the vehicle design and its capabilities. Thus, in the last 2 years, the group has started
to introduce more advanced concepts like autonomous
robots in specific editions of our workshops. Therefore, for particular groups of especially smart students,
an experimental activity has been carried out with
the objective of building autonomous, programmable
robots. For that purpose, the students use an opensource electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. The students program the vehicles
in an open-loop frame (no feedback sensors have been
used yet) and design different trajectory missions later
tested at the pool. The students are motivated to tune
up their programs to match the physical properties of
their prototypes. Despite the results, there is still a lot
of work to do. The incidence of this kind of activities
in the students decision to carry on with engineering
studies has to be deeply analyzed with statistical data.
This is one of the most serious aspects we are currently pointing out as our future work. To conclude,
we want to point out that this educational workshop
won the 3rd prize of ITWorldEdu educational Award
2012 and the 5th prize ITWorldEdu to the best educational technology solution developed and applied to
schools [6].
Acknowledgments This work has been partially funded by
the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya) through
ACDC grants 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, the EnginyCAT
program, MICINN project CTM2010-15216, EU project FP7ICT-2009-248497 and the UdG (Social Council, VICOROB
Research Group, Patronatge of Technical School and Vicerectorate of Research). Also, our special thanks to Miquel
-Miki- Villanueva and ALTECNIA for his invaluable support
among all aspects of the activity during all these years.
References
1. Bloom, B., Englehart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W., Krathwohl,
D.: Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Longmans, Green and Co., New
York (1956)
2. Bohm, H., Jensen, V.: Build Your Own Underwater Robot
and Other Wet Projects, 6th edn. Wescoast Words, Vancouver, Canada. ISBN 0968161006 (1997)
3. Brand, B., Collver, M., Kasarda, M.: Motivating students
with robotics. Sci. Teach. 75(4) (2008)
4. Cufi, X., Villanueva, M., El-Fakdi, A., Garcia, R., Massich,
J.: Team-based building of a remotely operated robot as
a method to increase interest for engineering among secondary school students. In: Edulearn, International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies.
Barcelona (2012)
5. EDUROV: The edurov project. https://sites.google.com/a/
plocan.eu/edurovs/
6. ITWorldEdu: Itworldedu mobilising schools. www.
itworldedu.cat (2012)
7. Marston, W.: Emotions of normal people, 1st edn. Routledge. ISBN 0415210763 (1999)
8. McGrath, B., Sayres, J., Lowes, S., Lin, P.: Underwater
lego robotics as the vehicle to engage students in stem: The
build it projects first year of classroom implementation.
In: ASEE Mid-Atlantic Section Conference. Hoboken, New
Jersey (2008)
9. Moore, S., Bohm, H., Jensen, V.: Underwater Robotics.
ISBN 9780984173709. Science, Design and Fabrication.
Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE),
Monterrey CA, USA (2010)
10. Stolkin, R., Hotaling, L., Sheryll, R.: Using uderwater
robotics in the engineering classroom. In: ROBOLAB Conference. Austin, Texas (2005)
11. Taslidere, E., Cohen, F., Reisman, F.: Wireless sensor
networks, a hands-on modular experiments platform for
enhanced pedagogical learning. IEEE Trans. Educ. 54(1),
2433 (2011)
12. Vega, D., Rodrguez, C., Villanueva, M., Cufi, X.: Taller de
Robotica Submarina (Manual de Construccion de un ROV).
Plataforma Oceanica de Canarias (PLOCAN), in spanish
edn. (2014)
13. Villanueva, M., Cufi, X., El-Fakdi, A., Ridao, P., Garcia,
R.: Attracting talent to increase interest for engineering
among secondary school students. team-based building of a
remotely operated underwater. In: IEEE EDUCON (2011)
Andres El-Fakdi assistant professor and researcher in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Automation at the University of Girona. Im a member of the 4T
laboratory in the Control Engineering and Intelligent Systems
Group. My research interests are focused in contributing to the
development of machine learning techniques for Decision Support Systems (DSS) to increase productivity and effectiveness
in highly complex scenarios and designing activities addressed
to promote robotics and underwater robotics among secondary
school students. Along the PhD my research has been focused
on the study and development of machine learning techniques
and its application to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV)