When ECE department of Government College of Engineering, Salem, announced a workshop on Robotics, more than 120 students from nearby engineering colleges came forward to attend the workshop. Then the department selected only 60 students to participate in the two days robotic workshop. The department already had the required FASTBots at its disposal to conduct this workshop.
Senior students of the department have taken the responsibility to conduct this workshop. The workshop started with the introduction on the robotic trainer of the workshop, FASTBot, explaining in detail about the hardware, different sensors, mechanical elements along with the exclusive software environment, Topview Robotic IDE. The introduction was supported with the video clippings to assure the participating students about the capabilities of the FASTBot and motivating them to get ready to work with the proven robotic platform. The students were grouped into 20 batches and each group was given a FASTBot to start their study.
Since the flow of the workshop activities are clearly pre-defined, the interaction was started with warm-up exercises to make the students get intimate with the FASTBot and its capabilities. They started understanding various robotic operations, stage by stage, first with motor functions, sensors, then to proceed with using the sensors in many applications and students end up applying the sensors in the given example applications.
At the end of the day, when students started feelings comfortable and confident, they were given a challenge on navigating the given line with obstacles, that should be performed at the end of the next day. The challenge was designed in a such a way to pull up the students to apply what they learned into a complete solution.
The second day started seeing the students working with bits and pieces of their complete solution to produce the desired results.
At the end of the day, the students started showing their efforts to a gathering to make the mark for themselves. Top three performing teams were presented with cash prizes and students left the campus pocketing an useful confidence in taking up more robotic activities in the coming days.
The department conducted pre-worshp as well as post-workshop surveys to get to know the students’ mind and their reactions to various aspects of the workshop. Here comes, the survey findings for your reference.
End of report.
