by Ethan Danahy, Research Assistant Professor in Computer Science and at the CEEO
In Fall 2017, Prof. Ethan Danahy once again taught his first-year introduction to engineering course “Simple Robotics” to 28 of the Tufts University freshmen engineering students. After a sequence of shorter, week-long projects (ranging from designing Robotic Animals and Astronaut Tools to creating an interactive Haunted House and performing Robotic Magic Tricks), the final project of the semester was to design, build, test, and refine a “Playful Creation” for four-to-eight year old children.
Having a project focused on a real client, and one that could come into the CEEO and test the students’ projects, required that the beginning engineers not only apply the hardware and software content knowledge they developed throughout the semester, but also empathize with the children and incorporate aspects of their designs that would appeal to the young testers. Partly because of the joy of delighting the children, and also partly because their final grade depended on it (as the children, armed with clipboards, also judged the undergraduates’ projects).
Through an iterative design process, including a testing day where the prototypes were tested with the children and feedback given, the final projects were a great success and engaged the young clients for the full testing time, requiring the adult supervisors to have to eventually shut down the session and force some of the kids to go home (so the Tufts students could get to their other classes).
- Penguins: an interactive social toy penguin that reacted to different styles of play
- Pokemon Chase: themed cars that required kids to chase and “catch them” with flashlights and lasers
- CustaMaze: a robotic marble maze that kids could customize, and then challenge their friends to solve
- Dino Safari: a table-top exploration landscape, where a safari car traveled through the Jurassic period searching for dinosaurs
- Shoot-Tac-Toe: a robotic update to the traditional Tic Tac Toe game where participants had to shoot ping-pong balls into a grid in order to secure spots
