WIP: Engineering, Art, and Education - Designing Practical Robots in an Engineering Course

In this innovative practice works-in-progress paper we designed an undergraduate/graduate engineering course that fosters learning experiences for students to develop and customize robotics for art and educational contexts. Engineering projects that offer real-world solutions provide students with a sense that they are engaging in something meaningful and see their time in school as a benefit to society. Engineering students in a robotics fundamentals course were paired with a senior art or engineering student mentor with prior experience to help develop a robotics platform for social good. Students were given basic robotics kits to create unique solutions that meet the needs of potential students in art or computer science education. We seek to capture this multidisciplinary approach that provides students with an experiential learning opportunity in engineering to design robotic systems. We report findings from the course and the students' projects. Seven groups created robots for art and three created robots for computer science education.