Humanoid Robotics to enhance STEM Education via. EZ JD in Wales
By Jayesh Saini and Dr. Esyin Chew, EUREKA Robotics Lab, Cardiff School of Technologies, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Nowadays, robotics can be the mean of present and future education revolution. All 21st Century learners need to understand the Fourth Industrialization (Robotics and AI) to make us adaptable to the drastic change in our job roles in what is coming up. As children are the forthcoming human labor’s in the next Industrialization, educators need to assure that they receive comprehensive and cutting edge education which will not only make our career bright but overall it creates a sustainability for the future generations to grow in terms of knowledge and technology. Education Department of the UK Parliament has published both oral and written evidence from the national expert views on how the national leaders and education policymakers should respond to the Fourth Industrialization. As one of the flagship research clusters at the Cardiff School of Technologies, EUREKA Robotics Lab have implemented the 4-steps framework for University-Schools engagement across Wales to deliver STEM workshop at schools through robotics with yearly robotics competition award ceremony. The three-dimensional printable JD Robots are the key applied AI technologies we use.
We all know that, robots will form a significant part of our life’s in the coming future, so even, a single piece of information that helps us in understanding them easily or in lay man’s terms that is understandable to everyone will be beneficial for us then, there would be no fear of robots as we think that they will create in future which overall makes the whole future generation future proof ready. As the next revolution is based on AI (Artificial Intelligence), we would assert that education policymakers need to include these subjects in the formal curriculum of the primary education in simplest of terms so that it is easily understandable to anyone irrespective of their educational background. Currently, EUREKA Robotics lab and our STEM education outreach programme are popular across Wales for schools’ robotics and AI workshops, not merely within the schools’ Science Weeks or STEM weeks, and the UK Saturday Science Clubs. However, in order to embed that formally into the daily curriculum is the next big step we are working with policymakers and leaders in Wales. There are many educational robots exhibited in the recent BETT London. We would suggest that not all “educational robots” exhibited in BETT are worthwhile be included in formal curriculum. Some are merely too costly for schools to afford or too simple to teach the complexity of robotics and AI. Currently, EUREKA Robotics Lab use a few robots 3D printable robots, Robot Baby Newton, JD and Nao Robots for STEM workshops across schools.
Currently, there are lots of robots in the commercial market which helps in enhancing robotics education but EZ JD robots takes an edge over all of them by making robotics education as easy to understand as possible which means it resembles humans i.e., human like interactions. In terms of JD, it is a humanoid robot with various AI functionalities in it (cheap maintenance cost-3D printable, face recognition, object recognition, color recognition, glyph and QR code identification, Chatbot functionalities, Twitter API Support, Mobile platform adaptability, Adaptability to various sensors-ultrasonic distance, etc.)
They both can be used for education or for research purposes. In EUREKA Robotics Lab, we use JD’s and Nao’s for research and for providing various educational workshops for students, industrialists, etc. There are several interesting student projects made by Cardiff Met students in their robotics modules-CIS5002 Physical Computing using humanoid robots like Math Tutor project, Swahili Language Teacher project, Dutch Language Tutor project and Receptionist with Pandora Bot project . So, in overall, “Robotics is the future of almost everything that we do today!” The curriculum tomorrow must take some steps to prepare the next generation of Welsh and UK education, watch this space at EUREKA Robotics Lab!
