A Toolkit for Learning: Technology of the MIT LEGO Robot Design Competition

The LEGO Robot Design Competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a hands-on, project-based workshop class for undergraduates developed to excite students about robotic technology as they build a competitive autonomous robot of their own design. This paper analyzes two aspects of the technology created for the workshop: the robotic contest specifications and the hardware and software control technology created for the students’ use. The goal is to illuminate the iterative process of designing the workshop class, which led to lessons about educational technology, classroom culture, and its impact on students’ learning. The results of this work include recommendations about structuring design problems for students, features of educational technology for maximizing students’ learning, and thoughts on the role of design in engineering education. Each year since 1991, over one hundred and fifty undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have participated in the “LEGO Robot Design Competition,” an experimental workshop class based on the central activity of building a fully functional autonomous robot. This paper focuses specifically on an analysis of the technology created for the workshop, and lessons about effectively structuring materials and problem spaces for students’ design work. A brief introduction to the Robot Design workshop will serve as a prelude to the content of the paper. The popular class, taken by students on a voluntary basis during the January semester break, immerses students in an intensive, hands-on design experience. Working in teams of two or three, students encounter key ideas in engineering and Figure 1: Poster advertising the Robo-Pong contest to the MIT community. robotics: electronic hardware, software design, mechanical design, control theory, and systems integration. More importantly, the workshop gives students the opportunity to design—to take their own ideas from initial conception to implementation, debugging, and application. In addition, as they prepare for the final competitive performance, which is attended by several hundred members of the MIT community (see Figure 1), students confront real-world engineering issues of performance, reliability, and deadlines. The pedagogical approach taken by the Robot Design class has roots in the constructionist theories of learning developed by Seymour Papert [5]. According to Constructionism, the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities is an active process of creation engaged in by the learner. This process can be catalyzed when the learner is building something in the world in addition to building knowledge inside his or her own mind. The artifact that is created serves as an “object to think with,” in Papert’s terminology, that allows the learner to reflect on his or her own ideas as they are expressed in the project itself. Based on this theory of learning, the Robot Design workshop offers a valuable model of a classroom and workshop experience for university-level engineering students. By recognizing the central role that design can have in the learning process, the class inspires high-quality learning, genuine interest, and confidence in students at a variety of stages in their academic careers. Students learn not only about the technical issues mentioned, but also about teamwork and project management, and they experience the engineer’s satisfaction and exhilaration of bringing one’s ideas into reality. This paper examines two aspects of the technologycreated for the Robot Design workshop: the robotic contest specifications and the custom hardware and software materials created for students’ use.