RoboEDU - Day 1 - Introduction to controllers
6-day educational workshop on Robotics and Arduino for school children
The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society of University of Peradeniya have commenced a six-day online workshop on “Getting Started with Robot Design”, namely “RoboEdu”, with a syllabus specially designed for school children from grade six to grade twelve with the hope of teaching the basics of initializing a project on robotics. The basic idea of this project was to provide the fundamental knowledge to the students about "Arduino", an open-source electronics platform used to computerize the codes to operate a device such as a robot until they get enough knowledge to finish a project. Throughout the journey of the six days, we were able to fulfil this with great success.
With this brilliant idea of educating the youngsters, we thought of giving tasks at the end of each and every day to test the level of the students and to check whether they have grabbed the content taught. Then, the idea came to evaluate their answers, and award the best students at the end of the workshop. So, we thought of having an event partner, and we found Thingerbits, an electrical shop as our event partner.
Then, as the first step, we contacted the teacher-in-charge of the Robotics Club/ Innovation Club (or any other relevant society /club) of some selected schools and asked whether the students of the above-said clubs are keen on learning robotics and are willing to participate in our workshop. As the willingness of the students was high and approval was granted, we sent the syllabus to each and every school via E-mail. But, as per the participation count restrictions on the Zoom platform due to the link being a data-charge free version and as we have to allow all the participating schools to join us, we have decided to limit the maximum count from a school to 15 students. But we arranged a separate YouTube live streaming at the same time for others to join and provided the recordings after the sessions for others to refer to.
DAY 01
The first day of the workshop was 29/01/2021 and with a brief introduction about the workshop, the students were taught starting from why we should learn about robotics. This commenced from 6.30 PM onwards and was until 8.30 PM. The session was conducted by Mr. Pulathisi Perera, vice-chairperson of IEEE RAS UOP. He explained what robotics is, how the trend in automation is invading the world, how we get the first approach to start our own project and how we stick together with our project in difficult situations to witness the final outcome. This was really an encouragement for the young innovative minds and the success of this session can be measured by the submissions of the given task. The audience was really energetic during the session and was eager to clear their doubts during the question and answer session.
Date and Time
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- Starts 05 December 2021 08:00 PM UTC
- Ends 27 January 2022 08:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Speakers
Dr. Tharindu Weerakoon
A brief introduction about the workshop
Gave a brief introduction on what this workshop is about and mortivate the young innovative minds to think new
Biography:
Dr. Tharindu Weerakoon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Peradeniya. He has earned his Master of Science and Ph.D. both in Robotics and Control from the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan. He has also worked as a researcher at the same institution. Before that, he has served for several state and private academic institutions as a consultant. Not only that, Dr.Tharindu has been a member of the underwater research group of the Center for Socio-Robotic Synthesis at KIT in collaboration with the University of Tokyo, Japan. He has also published several journals and conference papers in which some of which have received the best paper award. His main interests are concentrated in the fields of Robotic Control, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning.
Mr. Pulasthi Perera
How to succeed by doing a project and the basics on Robotics
By briefing about the event he gave an kick start to the youngsters who are willing to start their own project and succeed. Also he explained how to start a project and continue it until the end without demortivating during the failures. Then he explained the main components and tricks in approching the field.
Biography:
Mr. Pulasthi Perera is a third-year Electrical and Electronics Engineering undergraduate at the Faculty of the Engineering, of University of Peradeniya. He is the Vice-Chair of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society of University of Peradeniya for the term 21/22. He is currently working as a Trainee Electronics Engineer at Vega Innovations Pvt. Ld. His interests are power Electronics, Electronics Design and Robotics.
Agenda
6.30 PM - 6.35 PM - Opening the session by the moderator
6.35 PM - 6.45 PM- Welcome speech and the introduction to the workshop by the senior advisor of IEEE RAS UOP, Dr Thadindu Weerakoon
6.45 PM - 6.55 PM - A introduction speech by our Event partner, Thingerbits
6.55 PM - 7.55 PM - The main session Mr. Pulathisi Perera, Vice Chairperson of IEEE RAS UOP
7.55 PM - 8.00 PM - Giving the day 01 task and ending the session.
youtube link - https://youtu.be/uf43NNYuAWg
Media
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