The paradigm of utilizing robots in the teaching process: a comparative study

This paper discusses a comparative study of the effects of using a humanoid robot for introducing students to personal robotics. Even if a humanoid robot is one of the more complicated types of robots, comprehension was not an issue. The study highlighted the importance of using real hardware for teaching such complex subjects as opposed to relatively cheap simulation environments. While the field of robotics is still in its infancy it benefits from a “wow” effect that can be utilized to positively influence the education of new specialists in this field. This comparative study, done at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, highlights the educational benefits of this idea. Two groups of students took part on a completely volunteer basis in an “introduction to personal robotics” workshop. While one group only worked with simulators on computers, the other group was also given access to real robots in addition to the simulators. This allowed them to test their programs on a real platform and tweak them to compensate for differences between the virtual world and the real world. This second group had consistently and considerably better results than the first group.