Attracting Students to Engineering: Using Intuitive HRIs for Educational Purposes

Today, industrialized countries are facing a major problem, the lack of skilled engineers. Despite the increasing demand for engineers in the labor market, the number of students going to engineering courses has been declining. This paper reports some initiatives carried out by the industrial robotics laboratory of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) which can contribute to help the youths to obtain an enlarged image of what the engineers can do. These initiatives have focused on the organization of one-day visits to the university campus and participation in events (fairs and exhibitions) to disseminate science and technology. Our participation in such initiatives has been done through the exhibition of a robotic platform to be experienced by the public, usually high school students. In order to allow visitors to intuitively drive the robot, two human-robot interfaces (HRI) has been used. So, to make the process more appealing, the visitors will not only drive the robot but also will play a game with the robot. Besides, it is also important for us receive feedback from the visitors. In such way, a questionnaire about their understanding of the presented robotic platform was proposed. Some points regarding the questionnaires are pointed out for discussion, the students' interest in robotics and the effectiveness of our "hands-on' robotic platform. Results are presented by dividing the answers collected by gender.