RML organizes frequent lab visits for the K-12 community to demonstrate the internal workings of a research Lab. Driven by the desire to welcome the young community into STEM-based fields and Robotics fields, we have coordinated numerous lab visits and hosted school students. Details of selected Lab visits can be found below.
RML at Virginia Tech
Nearly 50 kids within the age range of kindergartners to upcoming 6th graders visited lab on July 17th 2018. The visit was divided into two sessions. The first session involved a lab tour, where the kids interacted with the graduate students at RM Lab about the various projects going on in the lab such as STORM and the BOLT quadruped. The second session involved hands on experience using the robotics teaching lab at Virginia Tech. Kids had a chance to use the Geomagic Touch, a haptic device used to introduce intermediate and advanced control concepts and theories related to robotics and haptics. The kids had a chance to play Virtual reality Ping-Pong game with haptic feedback from the system. They also had a chance to operate the 6 DOF serial robotic arms (MICO) by Kinova. The students were given the opportunity to use a Graphical Interface to guide the arm through predefined trajectories.
RML at George Washington University
On October 11, 2013, Prof. Ben-Tzvi and his doctoral student William Rone hosted a group of middle school students from Friendship Public Charter School for a visit to the GW Robotics and Mechatronics Lab. These students are participating in the FIRST Lego League Challenge, an international competition that introduces robotics to elementary and middle school students. Students learned about the fundamentals of robotic systems and were shown a variety of robots and research that students in Dr. Ben-Tzvi's lab are working on.
On October 25th, 2012, sixth-graders from Oak Hill Elementary School's FIRST Lego League team visited the lab to learn more about how robots can solve real-world problems. These students are currently working on a challenge titled 'Senior Solutions' that explores ways in which robots may be used to assist senior citizens in day-to-day tasks. During the visit, students learned about teleoperated systems vs. autonomous systems, the different disciplines that make up robotics, and how engineers break up complex problems into simpler tasks and work together to solve them. In addition, students had the opportunity to see a variety of robot systems being developed in the lab, including our field mobile robots, hexapod legged robots, and our continuum robotic arm.