Exploring Affordances of Robot Manipulators in an Introductory Engineering Course

摘要

In this paper, we report on our experience to develop a way for exposing industrial engineering (IE) students, already in their first year of studies, to the challenges of industrial robot operation. We implemented a workshop in which students performed spatial manipulation tasks, using a conventional robot Scorbot-ER5 and a modern Baxter. The goal of our study was to examine how the students learn through exploration of robot affordances and how the learning impacts their appreciation of the role of robotics in IE, interest in industrial robotics, and spatial awareness. We conducted two case studies: in the first, students operated Scorbot-ER5 in virtual and physical modes, and in the second, students operated both Scorbot-ER5 and Baxter, in the virtual mode. The study focused on students' performances, their difficulties, and responses about of the workshop contribution. Students' success in learning robot affordances was indicated by the improvement in task performance. The spatial difficulties that students faced in exploring affordances of the robots, and the ways by which they coped with the difficulties were identified and categorized. Most of the students self-evaluated that the workshop highly contributed to their spatial awareness and interest in industrial robotics and exposed them to the role of robotics in industrial engineering. These evaluations were significantly higher in the second study, in which students also operated the modern robot Baxter.