Attracting Students to Engineering: Using Intuitive HRIs for Educational Purposes
Today, industrialized countries are facing a major problem, the lack of skilled engineers. Despite the increasing demand for engineers in the labor market, the number of students going to engineering courses has been declining. This paper reports some ini
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Department of Mechanical Engineering (CEMUC), University of Coimbra, POLO II, 3030-788, Coimbra, Portugal {pedro.neto,nuno.mendes,n.mourato,jnp}@dem.uc.pt Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto (INESC-Porto), University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal [email protected]
Abstract. Today, industrialized countries are facing a major problem, the lack of skilled engineers. Despite the increasing demand for engineers in the labor market, the number of students going to engineering courses has been declining. This paper reports some initiatives carried out by the industrial robotics laboratory of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) which can contribute to help the youths to obtain an enlarged image of what the engineers can do. These initiatives have focused on the organization of one-day visits to the university campus and participation in events (fairs and exhibitions) to disseminate science and technology. Our participation in such initiatives has been done through the exhibition of a robotic platform to be experienced by the public, usually high school students. In order to allow visitors to intuitively drive the robot, two human-robot interfaces (HRI) has been used. So, to make the process more appealing, the visitors will not only drive the robot but also will play a game with the robot. Besides, it is also important for us receive feedback from the visitors. In such way, a questionnaire about their understanding of the presented robotic platform was proposed. Some points regarding the questionnaires are pointed out for discussion, the students’ interest in robotics and the effectiveness of our “hands-on” robotic platform. Results are presented by dividing the answers collected by gender. Keywords: Robotics, Education, HRI, Student Recruitment.
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Introduction
Nowadays, industrialized countries are facing a major problem, the lack of skilled engineers. In fact, the demand for engineers in the labor market have increased and the number of students going to engineering courses has been declining, especially in some European countries [1], but also in U.S.A. and Japan [2,3,4]. Apparently, this decline starts when a country reaches first world status and living standards. In these countries, most of the young people are unfamiliar with the “difficult” of the work and do not see the value in undertaking engineering P. Vadakkepat et al. (Eds.): FIRA 2010, CCIS 103, pp. 250–257, 2010. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010
Attracting Students to Engineering
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courses when apparently they could choose more “appealing” careers [1]. On contrary, in developing countries like China or India, engineering have a high status in the public opinion, and engineers’ contributions to society are more visible in these countries [5]. In our opinion, another reason for this trend seems to be that most of the young people have no idea about what engineers can do, and therefore they don’t feel motivated to pursue studies in engineering. It is also our mission (engineers and scientists
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