Starting Robotics in secondary school: Assembling i-SIS an autonomous vehicle

The project aims to develop, balance and enhance the theoretical knowledge, skills and attitudes of students focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines applied at secondary school level. The work, carried out by K-12 students, is differentiated into two blocks, coding and robotics. In the first block, programming in Scratch becomes one of the main goals, in which the students make code intuitively but supervised by the teacher, enhancing and developing the computational thinking and the digital competence. The programming tools used are Code, Scratch, Arduino and Scratch4Arduino. In the second block, an autonomous vehicle named i-SIS is assembled. Here, they will implement their knowledge to make it work. In teams, the students will apply their knowledge of mechatronics. Controlling emotions, interpersonal motivation and collaborative work will be essential for success. Moreover, the student’s autonomy selfesteem and entrepreneurship are boosted. Keywords—digital competence; starting robotics; autonomous vehicle; mechatronics; computational thinking