Objectives of the team
The ISEP Pole of INESC TEC Porto has a long previous experience in the use of robotics to help motivate and teach Electrical Engineering concepts to students. As part of this strategy, it has been involved for several years in Robocup Middle Size League (F2000) with its ISePorto team, having participated in several editions of the Robocup competition. Besides it has an on-going activity in the use of robotics as learning medium in the pre-university teaching levels. The technologic dissemination project “Aprender com Robótica (Learn with robotics)” addresses the development and use of micro robots in the high school education.Also, the premises of the ISEP Pole of INESC TEC Porto were designed following the integration of its team lines of work: research and development, education and technology dissemination. It has a 600 square meters free indoor area for robot development and test (including robotic soccer field, rescue and urban robotics scenarios, UAV, construction areas and other spaces). Additional facilities support the research such as dedicated micro-soldering room, PCB fabrication, machine workshop, and administrative support and research labs.
Based on this previous experience held by INESC TEC and the experience of the prospective team leader on industrial robotics, the idea is to create a new team to participate in the RoCKIn@Work competitions. This team should be mainly composed of ISEP Licenciatura (first Bologna cycle) and Master Courses on Electrical and Computer Engineering final year students, from the branches of “Automation and Systems” and “Autonomous Systems”, with the support of teachers from relevant subjects on the robotics and automation areas, that would supervise the students work on behalf of the team.
The ISEP teachers that are tied to INESC TEC have already proved their capability to attract students to develop their final year graduation projects and Master Thesis on the area of robotics and, particularly, on projects related to robotics competition teams. The involvement of the students on these activities has created benefits for the team, but also for the students themselves. Many have been strongly touched by the robotics related areas, and have since then pursued studies and research in these areas. This has been particularly noted in the ISePorto team, were the majority of the elements were ISEP students. Many of them have performed that graduation project and Master Thesis on aspects related to the team development, and some of them have continued their studies, being presently enrolled in PhD programs in Portuguese Universities. Most notably, a few are now teachers at some Portuguese higher education institutions.
The idea with the
promotion on the new team for participating in the RoCKIn@Work competition is
to somehow “repeat” this process with a new challenge. According to the
proponent opinion, the fact that there is a specific target to address, and the
existence of an underlying competition to solve the problem(s) under
consideration, facilitates the recruitment of students interested in
constituting the team and will allow an increased motivation on the
participating team. This has already been observed this semester, as will be
presented in the following section.