Digital game-based learning in a robotics course

Abstract

This paper deals with two experiments regarding games developed in Scratch in the course of robotics at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná campus Cornélio Procópio (UTFPR-CP) to assist in the learning of an autonomous vehicle using a similar classic game of war tanks, existing since the 80s for the Atari 2600. In the first experiment, applied to the class 2019/2, a student (player) controls a tank using the keyboard in a battle against another autonomous tank. In this game, certain fundamentals are presented, such as pose (position x, y and the angle formed in relation to the x axis), basic notions about controlled and autonomous robots, hierarchy of actions, modeling using state machine. These concepts were extracted through a questionnaire filled out by the students after the end of the games. The second experiment, applied to the 2020/1 class, was based on a game inspired by the classic Pong, using though more degrees of freedom (DOF). In this case, the player must operate the keyboard to reach a ball through a robotic arm with two rotating joints. Moreover, concepts such as workspace (in two dimensions), multiple solutions, inverse and direct kinematics were introduced. Delivery rates were 90% and 80% regarding the first and the second experiment, respectively. Finally, despite the limited number of these experiments, it is believed that the objective of using more modern didactic tools to teach important concepts in the discipline of robotics has been achieved. Thus, students perceived more easily the basic concepts of robotics presented in the experiments than ever before.