Virtual Robotics Labs

We had our annual robotics program at school this week, but I had a few students who did not elect to participate, so we ran our own robotics program in the classroom. I found two websites featuring virtual robotics labs they could use to learn to build and program, and most of them finished at least the first one, with two getting almost to the end of the second one.

The first is the Wonderville Robot Lab which introduces components robots are made of (gears, levers, wheels, etc.), and sends children on a little mission to help Crash finish his chores so he can go to the movies with the professor. Unfortunately, Crash is destined to be washing dishes forever, as the program glitches as you try to give the dishwashing robot something to move with. It's definitely designed for younger children - some of mine got quite bored with it easily, while others really enjoyed the cartoon interface and were sad they couldn't do more with it.

Wonderville Lab, Crash, and the robot building lab

The second simulation we used was the Mind Project Virtual Robotics Lab, where students learn to build a real robot (IRIS) using a blueprint and click-and-drag components, and then learn basic programming to make the robot move and perform simple tasks, like picking up a can and putting it in the recycling. This is far more advanced, and only three of us stayed the course for the time we had. It's probably better suited to upper primary students, or gifted students from middle primary.

Screen grabs of building IRIS and the robotic arm, and programming wheel motion.

Why do I see robotics as important? Eighteen years ago, I taught myself html and had a look at Java, and began making websites on the now-defunct Geocities hosting service. I had no idea back then that the internet would expand to the point it has, and that there would be jobs that existed now that hadn't even been dreamed up when I was 11. In eighteen more years, it's quite likely that even more of our manufacturing and manual labour jobs will be done by machines, but while that shuts down many jobs that have been in existence for humans since the dawn of the industrial revolution, it opens up the doors for careers in programming and building robots and components that have barely begun to be dreamed of now. Agrarian, to industrial, to virtual - the world in which the generation I teach will work is is vastly different to that which we prepared to work in at their age.

This video sums it up pretty well.