Robots and Smartphones for Attracting Students to Engineering Education

The field of Robotics has been around for over half a century.Historically robots have been mostly used for industrial manufacturing applications, although emerging areas in medical, space, security, military, entertainment, and service applications are gaining momentum in the recent years.In the academic community also there have been growing efforts at many K-12 schools to motivate students in STEM education through participation in robotics competitions.A well-known example in this regard is the FIRST, which organizes a number of regional and national robotic competitions.This paper presents a pre-college summer program in robotics and Smartphone programming that is developed for high school students with the goal of attracting them to the field of engineering.The program offers great opportunities for the participants to appreciate the practical value of their academic curriculum and at the same time develop their creativity, problem solving, communication, and team skills.