Bringing robotics closer to students - a threefold approach

In this paper, we present our threefold concept of "bringing robotics closer to students". Our efforts begin with motivating high-school students to study engineering sciences by increasing their interest in technical issues. This is achieved by a national robotics contest. Besides our work with high-school students, we also focus on projects for undergraduate university students. Several robotics projects and competitions are included into the curriculum of electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science. These projects offer chances to do special assignments and student research projects. It may be important to point out that most of the work described in this paper, including inventing and specifying the projects and organizing the events, has been done by undergraduate and graduate students