Author(s):
Need: Despite its short history, soft robotics has gained significant momentum and may represent a paradigm shift in robotics that can revolutionize modern industry and society. Soft robotics will play a significant role in Industry 5.0, which has a human-centric approach. Industry 5.0 will create numerous job opportunities for skilled soft robotics engineers and technologists due to its focus on human-machine collaboration. As a result, the education components in soft robotics will be as critical as the research activities to prepare students for success as a future workforce in the evolving industry. However, evidence shows that most soft robotics research and education only happens in well-established, highly-resourced universities, leaving many undergraduate students with limited opportunities to be involved in this field. The lack of necessary education infrastructure to support soft robotics workforce training represents another major barrier. This project will overcome these barriers through integrated research and education activities, targeting undergraduate education. Our project leverages an existing, four-semester, multidisciplinary, project-based course sequence called clinics to guide students through the design of soft robotics learning modules targeted at topics at various levels of a Mechanical Engineering (ME) curriculum. As the project progresses, we aim to implement these modules in our ME curriculum at Rowan and share them publicly via a website. Guiding Questions: We have developed research questions relating to thrusts of Integration and Innovation which, when put together allow us to answer questions about how we bring together soft robotics research and education for undergraduate students to develop cutting-edge soft robotics undergraduate curriculum.Outcomes: Our desired outcomes focus on improved undergraduate education in soft robotics and include: a set of stakeholder-informed learning objectives important to a soft robotics curriculum, corresponding learning modules to support the development of our established outcomes, and a publicly available resource, our website, that is robust enough to serve as a textbook-like resource for soft robotics education.Broader Impacts: So far, this project has impacted 13 undergraduate students through the first iteration of the soft robotics learning modules design clinic project, resulted in three conference papers sharing unique, student-designed modules, and begun development of a publicly available webpage to be published at the end of Summer 2024. As the project progresses, it will continue to remove the barriers between soft robotics research and education. Soft robotics will no longer be confined to well-established, highly-resourced universities through the clinic projects at Rowan and through the shared learning modules our students develop. It is our goal that the education-focused website we develop will be available to viewers worldwide, allowing other educators to adopt and implement soft robotics modules in their courses. It will serve as a vessel for a vibrant community of soft robotics educators to share ideas and improve the quality of education in soft robotics. In sum, these education and dissemination activities will have long-lasting effects to benefit future students interested in soft robotics.
Coauthors
Smitesh Bakrania, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ; Mitja Trkov, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ; Wei Xue, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ
