Robotics: Enhancing pre-college mathematics learning with real-world examples

Seventeen ninth grade students worked in teams to build their own low cost robots, program them and use them to draw various geometric shapes. The course was designed to enhance their interest in engineering and math, while providing a social context of empowerment, competition and cooperation. This paper will document our past and planned efforts to integrate robotics into high school math curriculum. Our goal is to build low-cost robots that can be purchased or built incrementally to manage budgetary restrictions. These robots should be reliable, robust, and most important of all, be customizable for the specific needs of the teacher and the student teams. Furthermore, we integrated the robots into math lessons. The results indicate that students in our robotics program benefited from the use of robots. We looked at a problem that students solved using the Pythagorean Theorem and then analyzed the results of the robotic simulation. The students correctly interpreted both the mathematical problem and the real world error that was produced when using the robots. Students were also able to understand the difference between conceptual error and real world error. The students recognized that the robots they built could be used as an instructional tool to a wider range of audience. In all, these clinical interviews explicitly show how students used the robotic art approach to better conceptualize and solve math problems. We also examined the two-boat problem that we intend to use in our future robotics math classroom. The problem is visually and dynamically solved. Successive approximation is used to identify a trend and come close to a solution. Using robots, students can guess and check to make sense of the problem then look at it from different angles and solve it in many ways. Students need to explore different estimates and evaluate each one until they come close to the solution. After examining the problem from so many different perspectives, they are now comfortable that the result they have gotten with the robots is near to the mathematically correct solution. Students can stop with the robotic investigation at any point and solve the problem algebraically. Learning mathematics with robots helps students visualize challenging real world applications and supports multiple representations of a problem. While students apply their knowledge of math concepts solving real world problems with the help of robots, they develop a lasting handson experience in a social context and a better attitude towards math education. Building low cost robots that schools can afford would ensure access, availability and foster mainstream instruction with robots that would help prepare our next generation in math and engineering principles.