Game‐Based Learning in Mobile Robotics: Teaching ROS2 Through a Competitive Game

ABSTRACT Robotics is a discipline gaining in relevance in the last decades. Although it becomes appealing for students, undergraduate courses related to robotics involve certain mathematical and programming skills that usually discourage students. In addition, teaching techniques followed by instructors largely affect the engagement of students and thus their academic results. A well‐studied way to overcome this situation is applying the so‐called Learning through play paradigm in the form of game‐based learning (GBL), which considers games to improve the learning experience. In this study, we leverage an ad hoc computer video game to increase the students' engagement and marks in an undergraduate course of robot programming using the robotic framework ROS2 and the 3D simulator CoppeliaSim. The experience was conducted on the academic year 2024/2025 when 45 students enrolled the course. The results have been evaluated using questionnaires and statistical comparison with the previous 4 academic years.