About

RoboCup@Home Education

Who are we?

We are part of RoboCup community focusing on robotics education in artificial intelligence (AI) and service robot development, particularly among young students (undergraduates and high schools) and non technical general public.

We have a central organizing committee (OC) for overall coordination of our activities, and regional committees (RC) from various regions in Asia, Europe, Americas and Oceania for the coordination of local activities.

Our worldwide communities: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/community

Why RoboCup@Home Education?

1. The “Bridging Problem”

Robotics education for young children is getting common and popular in modern society. However, whether it develops the required skill sets for real world robotics and AI development is still debatable. The bottom-up approach focuses on basic electronics circuitry, mechanical construction and basic programming which are essential fundamentals, but missing the advancement steps towards real world robotics and AI development in later stages. The gap in between requires an intermediate step to bridge basic robotics education towards real world robotics and AI development.

2. Robotics and AI Literacy

The rapid growth of practical robotics and AI development solving real world problems has increased the importance of robotics and AI literacy requirement in future workplace. However, current robotics and AI development is still highly research based and not readily available for the general public.

Publications

  • Jeffrey Too Chuan Tan, Luca Iocchi, Amy Eguchi, Hiroyuki Okada, "Bridging Robotics Education between High School and University: RoboCup@Home Education," in the proceedings of the IEEE AFRICON 2019, September 2019.

  • Luca Iocchi, Jeffrey Too Chuan Tan, Sebastian Castro, "RoboCup@Home Education: a new format for educational competitions," in the proceedings of the FabLearn Italy 2019, November 2019.

RoboCup@Home Education Initiative

RoboCup@Home Education is an educational initiative in RoboCup@Home that promotes educational efforts to boost RoboCup@Home participation and artificial intelligence (AI)-focused service robot development.

Under this initiative, currently there are 4 efforts in active operation:

  1. RoboCup@Home Education Challenge events (national, regional, international)

  2. Open Source Educational Robot Platforms for RoboCup@Home (service robotics)

  3. OpenCourseWare for the learning of AI-focused service robot development

  4. Outreach Programs (local workshops, international academic exchanges, etc.)

1. RoboCup@Home Education Challenge

The RoboCup@Home Education Challenge is an educational competition platform to cultivate beginner teams for RoboCup@Home challenges and service robot development. The purpose of the Education Challenge is to open participation for everyone, not limited to technical university students, but also inexperienced high school students and the general public. The unique Workshop+Competition format effectively boosts novice participants for challenging service robot development and AI learning within an event time. Hosted locally and internationally, by the community, and for the community.

Education Challenge events: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/challenges

2. Open Source Educational Robot Platforms

In RoboCup@Home Education, we promote and support the development of educational robot platforms for our community, by our community. With open source spirit and community driven development, we aim to create affordable and sustainable startup robot platforms for new participation.

Educational robot platforms: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/robots

3. OpenCourseWare (OCW)

Perfect match to the open source hardware and software systems for self-learning and learning materials for new community building. Crafted by experienced developers in collaboration with professional industrial partners, the set of learning materials include workshop presentations, application sample codes, tutorials and videos, is an ideal learning solution of AI and robotics even for beginners.

Learning resources: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/learn

*New* Online Classroom

In 2020, we have started online classroom to promote learning from home. We have adapted our education contents to enable learning from home via live streaming video conferencing and limited robot hardware availability. With the adaptation to using general PC system and accessories, and the combination with simulation platform, we are able to create similar learning contents for AI and robotics development at home.

Online Classroom: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/learn/online-classroom

4. Outreach Programs

We have started RoboCup@Home Education activities since 2015, organized various hands-on workshops, introductory talks & demos, academic exchange programs, and education challenges from local national events within countries, to regional events covering Asia-Pacific, Europe and Americas, and international events hosted in the annual international RoboCup events. Our outreach activities have raised over 15 regional communities worldwide, running events over 40 cities.

Our global outreach: https://www.robocupathomeedu.org/outreach