XRP Robot (Part 1)

Back on Dec 12, 2023, I participated in a webinar sponsored by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) entitled Re-Envisioning Robotics in Precollege Engineering Education.

Here is the description of the talk:

Join us for a free webinar on December 12, 2023 at 2:00 PM, ET that will share findings from a collective partnership between e4usa and FIRST Robotics Competitions that works to engage more pre-college students and teachers in STEM robotics programs.   e4usa is a national initiative designed to demystify engineering and democratize engineering education “for all.” The program supports teachers and students using an accessible and engaging project-based learning (PBL) approach. The PBL approach provides students with a hands-on experience in engineering, which prepares them for engagement in FIRST Robotics Competitions and future STEM careers. Working together with a cohort of teachers from across the country has allowed the research team to identify barriers to participation, while developing novel strategies to overcome these challenges. This includes a set of emergent blended e4usa-FIRST models and the launch of a new open source engineering education platform called the Experiential Robotics Platform.  This session will share the team’s findings to date and provide available techniques and resources to support more pre-college students and teachers with access to STEM robotics programs.

It was presented by Adam Carberry (Ohio State University) and David Rogers (DEKA Research). If you are not familiar with DEKA, it is a company founded by Dean Kamen, who also is the founder of FIRST robotics.

After the meeting all the materials were shared (and now I share them with you):

Webinar Materials: 

• Slides 
• Recording 

Video links used during the presentation: 

• XRP Assembly and Software, Starter Guide: https://youtu.be/JQyKhzlMSms?si=2h27hzeQDARNlwkV  
• XRP Movement Guide, Using the XRP Code Editor: https://youtu.be/jHKAQSRTRaM?si=5-e7UUfskVzU6f0O  
• XRP Delivery Challenge Guide, Using Servo and Sensors: https://youtu.be/DH_uv6ndZF0?si=dVSubIZ-od7qs5Bx  

Links shared in the chat: 

• https://e4usa.org  
• https://e4usa.org/about-us/research  
• https://e4usa.org/teachers 

This webinar is part of a larger series on building community and reflecting to re-envision in engineering education. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC-1733004. Find more details on the remaining webinars here.All webinars can be found on demand on ASEE Learning’s website here. 

After the meeting, I reached out to David and, since I am the Robotics Education Director for the West TN STEM Hub, we started talking about a collaboration and he was gracious enough to actually send me a XRP Robot for me to experiment with (I will post more as I get to play with it).