Neglecting Robots
I’ve been a big supporter of having students work with robotics since we taught robot camps at the Pacific Science Center back in the 1980s. I am always enthralled with the complexity and depth of the kids’ learning experiences as they collaborate, invent, design, built, and program their creations. Interest in this area has grown, and over the years their have been several generations of Lego Robotics systems and other classroom robotics curricula. On a much grander scale, the last decade has seen huge growth in the FIRST Robotics and FIRST Lego League after-school programs which have expanded to include tens of thousands of students. (I missed the FIRST competition in Tacoma a few weeks ago - drat!) Still, robotics languishes primarily as an after-school activity available in a few isolated school, and that’s always disappointed me.
In addition to the tremendous educational value I have seen in robotics, however, there is growing value in that area in terms of future careers. As the power of processing continues its relentless march into seeming infinity, we are getting close to a world of robotic devices that would appear to be out of science fiction. A popular video on YouTube lately has been film of a robot called Big Dog, a quadruped walking robot designed to carry military equipment. Another video making the rounds shows a prosthetic arm designed by Dean Kamen’s company that is so lifelike they call it the Luke Arm (as in Luke Skywalker). The military is funding much of the development of this field of study, but the spinoffs will move rapidly into other applications.
And this article describes a prediction just made that 3.5 million jobs will be replaced by robots in Japan by 2025. Not manufacturing jobs, but service jobs like nurses’ aides, receptionists, and so on. The Japanese population is aging rapidly, and there will be fewer and fewer young people to take on these jobs.
So this starts to look like a serious win-win situation to me. Robotics is a phenomenally exciting project-based learning experience for students of a wide variety of learning styles, one that immerses them in a process that thoroughly integrates design, creativity, mechanics, electronics, physics, math, and a host of many other areas - even art! And now, robotics is also a rapidly expanding career opportunity for our students. We need to look for more ways to give kids the chance to explore this fascinating, exciting area of study. (Or we may be importing all of our robots from Japan.)