关键词： computational thinking   intervention   K-12 education   programming   robotics  

摘要： The present research is part of the government funded project called Young Engineer's Workshop (YEW), a 2-week-long summer camp for youngsters to stimulate their interest in coding, electronics and robotics subjects in particular and STEAM fields in general. The YEW curriculum included basic electronics, block-based programming and robotics through Scratch and Arduino, and student projects on building robotics systems. This experimental study aimed to investigate the cognitive and affective consequences of YEW on the development of middle and high school students' computational thinking (CT) competences. The research methodology was based on a one-group pretest-posttest model within a quasi-experimental design. Participants were 17 students from grades 5-6 and 15 students from grades 9-10 in a southwestern city of Turkey. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through the YEW application form, a scale for CT, a satisfaction questionnaire, and student diaries. The results showed a significant increase on algorithmic and critical thinking factors of CT whereas no significant changes in creativity, cooperation, and problem-solving factors of CT. Students reported affective gains including high satisfaction and enjoyment of YEW activities, increased interest, and career planning in programming and robotics fields, and improved self-confidence in robotics project development. In conclusion, the study suggests that teaching programming can be an effective way to foster CT to some extent but not an adequate or complete solution. Educators need to seek more suitable teaching methods for a more comprehensive learning of CT that can be transferable to noncomputing contexts.

关键词： Artificial intelligence   Robotics   Big data   Internet of things   Fourth industrial revolution  

关键词： methodology   projects   robotics   learning   STEAM  

摘要： Technological changes pose the need to redefine educational models, incorporating programs, and methodologies, so that students acquire the scientific-technological competencies required in today's society. The objective of the research is aimed at establishing a generic method to develop STEAM projects, which are consistent with current curricula and at experimentally testing its validity by developing a STEAM project for a Primary Education class. As an example, and without loss of generality, the method proposed in this article is used to develop STEAM projects from the curriculum in the 4th, 5th, and 6th year of Primary Education in Spain. As a result, 11 areas of opportunity were detected, understood as areas that meet the necessary conditions to become the main theme of a STEAM project, and from which the "Sustainability" area was selected to develop a STEAM project. The project consists of an educational robotics kit, including a board that simulates a city and a robot programmed to travel on the board and activate the different elements that will make it a sustainable city. This first experience was carried out in a classroom with 30 students of 5th year, who showed great interest in the project and achieved a very satisfactory performance.

关键词： Simultaneous localization and mapping   Computer architecture   Rodents   Microprocessors   Visualization   Visual odometry   Accelerator   continuous attractor network   edge intelligence   experience map   simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)   spiking neural network (SNN)   topological map   visual odometry   visual template (VT)  

摘要： Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a quintessential problem in autonomous navigation, augmented reality, and virtual reality. In particular, low-power SLAM has gained increasing importance for its applications in power-limited edge devices such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and small-sized cars that constitute devices with edge intelligence. This article presents a 7.25-to-8.79-TOPS/W mixed-signal oscillator-based SLAM accelerator for applications in edge robotics. This study proposes a neuromorphic SLAM IC, called NeuroSLAM, employing oscillator-based pose-cells and a digital head direction cell to mimic place cells and head direction cells that have been discovered in a rodent brain. The oscillatory network emulates a spiking neural network and its continuous attractor property achieves spatial cognition with a sparse energy distribution, similar to the brains of rodents. Furthermore, a lightweight vision system with a max-pooling is implemented to support low-power visual odometry and re-localization. The test chip fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS exhibits a peak energy efficiency of 8.79 TOPS/W with a power consumption of 23.82 mW.

关键词： Wireless communication   Protocols   Robot kinematics   Aperture antennas   Complexity theory   Antenna radiation patterns   Antenna arrays  

摘要： Driven by their versatility and autonomy, advanced unmanned aerial systems have indicated substantial promise along the development of current communication networks, as well as in support of new communication platforms. The resulting integration of robotic and communication systems brings increased levels of complexity, which cannot be modeled accurately by conventional approaches. An example of this are aerial synthetic aperture antennas, in which an aerial robotic swarm coordinates their flight patterns and communication exchanges to produce a synthetic aperture. The accurate representation of such a system mandates the careful simulation of wireless communications, antenna radiation patterns, flight dynamics, and even environmental conditions. This article details an integrated communications and robotics simulation framework, which enables the assessment of these emerging systems. The benefits of this new approach are illustrated for the aerial synthetic aperture antenna example, but extend to a wide array of problems stemming from the union of communications and robotics. This novel modeling platform makes it possible to design and analyze joint flight and communication protocols for unmanned aerial systems. The obtained results provide valuable insights into the operation of swarm-based synthetic aperture antennas. Moreover, the methodology introduced in this work is flexible and can be readily applied to other instances of joint communication and robotic systems.

关键词： challenge-based learning   mechatronics   physical devices   problem-based learning   project-based learning   robotics   STEAM   STEM  

摘要： Nowadays, companies are demanding better-prepared professionals to succeed in a digital society, and the acquisition of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM)-related competencies is a key issue. One of the main problems in this sense is how to integrate STEAM into the current educational curricula. This is not something related to a subject or educational trend but rather to new methodological approaches that can engage students. In this sense, such active methodologies that apply mechatronics and robotics could be an interesting path to pursue. Given this context, the first necessary task in evaluating the potential of this approach is to understand the landscape of the application of robotics and mechatronics in STEAM Education and how active methodologies are applied in this sense. To carry out this analysis in a systematic and replicable manner, it is necessary to follow a methodology. In this case, the researchers employ a systematic mapping review. This paper presents this process and its main findings. Fifty-four studies have been selected out of 242 total studies analyzed. From these, beyond obtaining a clear vision of the STEAM landscape regarding project topics, we can also conclude that robotics and physical devices have been applied successfully with collaborative methodologies in STEAM Education. Regarding conclusions, this paper shows that robotics and mechatronics applied with active methodologies is to be a good means to engage students in STEAM disciplines and thus aid the acquisition of what is commonly known as "21st-century skills."

关键词： Emerging technology   Industrial robotics   Inclusive growth   Employment   Income inequality   Labour productivity  

摘要： This paper investigates the impact of industrial robot adoption on inclusive growth based on labour market evidence from a cross-country panel dataset of 74 economies between 2004 and 2016. It finds that the adoption of industrial robots is associated with significant gains in labour productivity and total employment in developed economies, while such effects are insignificant in developing countries. Increased robot adoption is related to a significantly lower labour share of GDP in developing economies but not in developed countries. Overall, in both developed and developing economies, increased robot adoption is linked with significantly higher income in-equality, although there is no evidence of technological unemployment. Furthermore, the employment of both male and female workers is positively associated with the adoption of industrial robots in developed economies, although females benefit slightly more. In developing countries, however, only those with middle or advanced levels of education benefit from the diffusion of robots.

摘要： Introduction: Short response time is critical for future military medical operations in austere settings or remote areas. Such effective patient care at the point of injury can greatly benefit from the integration of semi-autonomous robotic systems. To achieve autonomy, robots would require massive libraries of maneuvers collected with the goal of training machine learning algorithms. Although this is attainable in controlled settings, obtaining surgical data in austere settings can be difficult. Hence, in this article, we present the Dexterous Surgical Skill (DESK) database for knowledge transfer between robots. The peg transfer task was selected as it is one of the six main tasks of laparoscopic training. In addition, we provide a machine learning framework to evaluate novel transfer learning methodologies on this database. Methods: A set of surgical gestures was collected for a peg transfer task, composed of seven atomic maneuvers referred to as surgemes. The collected Dexterous Surgical Skill dataset comprises a set of surgical robotic skills using the four robotic platforms: Taurus II, simulated Taurus II, YuMi, and the da Vinci Research Kit. Then, we explored two different learning scenarios: no-transfer and domain-transfer. In the no-transfer scenario, the training and testing data were obtained from the same domain;whereas in the domain-transfer scenario, the training data are a blend of simulated and real robot data, which are tested on a real robot. Results: Using simulation data to train the learning algorithms enhances the performance on the real robot where limited or no real data are available. The transfer model showed an accuracy of 81% for the YuMi robot when the ratio of real-tosimulated data were 22% to 78%. For the Taurus II and the da Vinci, the model showed an accuracy of 97.5% and 93%, respectively, training only with simulation data. Conclusions: The results indicate that simulation can be used to augment training data to enhance the performa

关键词： Endoscopic spine surgery   Minimally invasive surgery   Navigation   Spine endoscope   Robot-assisted spine surgery  

摘要： Recently, spine surgery has gradually evolved from conventional open surgery to minimally invasive surgery, and endoscopic spine surgery (ESS) has become an important procedure in minimally invasive spine surgery. With improvements in the optics, spine endoscope, endoscopic burr, and irrigation pump, the indications of ESS are gradually widening from lumbar to cervical and thoracic spine. ESS was not only used previously for disc herniations that were contained without migration but is also used currently for highly migrated disc herniations and spinal stenosis;thus, the indications of ESS will be further expanded. Although ESS has certain advantages such as less soft tissue dissection and muscle trauma, reduced blood loss, less damage to the epidural blood supply and consequent less epidural fibrosis and scarring, reduced hospital stay, early functional recovery, and improvement of quality of life as well as better cosmesis, several obstacles remain for ESS to be widespread because it has a steep learning curve and surgical outcome is strongly dependent on the surgeon's skill fulness. A solid surgical technique requires reproducibility and ensured safety in addition to surgical outcomes. In this review article, how to improve ESS was investigated by grafting novel technologies such as navigation, robotics, and 3-dimensional and ultra resolution visualization.

关键词： learning analytics   primary and secondary education   robotic sensors   educational robotics   systematic review   STE(A)M   PRISMA methodology  

摘要： Robotics technology has become increasingly common both for businesses and for private citizens. Primary and secondary schools, as a mirror of societal evolution, have increasingly integrated science, technology, engineering and math concepts into their curricula. Our research questions are: "In teaching robotics to primary and secondary school students, which pedagogical-methodological interventions result in better understanding and knowledge in the use of sensors in educational robotics?", and "In teaching robotics to primary and secondary school students, which analytical methods related to Learning Analytics processes are proposed to analyze and reflect on students' behavior in their learning of concepts and skills of sensors in educational robotics?". To answer these questions, we have carried out a systematic review of the literature in the Web of Science and Scopus databases regarding robotics sensors in primary and secondary education, and Learning Analytics processes. We applied PRISMA methodology and reviewed a total of 24 articles. The results show a consensus about the use of the Learning by Doing and Project-Based Learning methodologies, including their different variations, as the most common methodology for achieving optimal engagement, motivation and performance in students' learning. Finally, future lines of research are identified from this study.