This year's RoboCup@Home Education came to an end, and the Affiliated High School of Zhejiang University won the fourth place and the Best Technical paper award for the first time! SoftBank Robotics had the honor to interview Wang Jiabin, a teacher from the high school affiliated to Zhejiang University, to understand the secret of how high school students can get such proud results in world-class competitions.

RoboCup@Home Education

For the first time to participate in the competition to win two awards, Mr. Wang and the students said that they were very happy to be recognized and affirmed by the competition judges, and they were very confident in their work before the competition!

The preparation time of the High School attached to Zhejiang University is actually not long. Since the school took over the Pepper robot in 2019, it has gradually set up robot elective courses and related clubs. The entries of this competition are from the project results of the school's robot elective course! This arrangement, on the one hand, can help high school students with heavy schoolwork to save valuable study time. In addition, knowing that the final project works can be entered into the competition can play a good incentive role for students, so as to improve their enthusiasm in elective courses.

The two groups of students participating in this competition are all high school students in the elective course "Python and Pepper have to Tell Stories". The LittleBoy group has been in touch with the programming of Pepper robot since the course started in October last year, while the Light group has been in touch with the robot competition since March this year, and can achieve such achievements in a short time. The strength of teenagers should not be underestimated! They are like rising stars, constantly bringing us new surprises and hopes.

After defining the goal of the competition, the students mainly used the relevant course resources provided by SoftBank robots and the technical documents and videos on the official forum of the competition in the preparation process. In the process of programming, the students adopted the Choregraphe language suitable for their programming level, and also wrote and developed the instruction box on the existing basis.

In order to fully exercise students' comprehensive ability, Teacher Wang will not participate too much in the preparation process except to give students necessary technical support and guidance and control the general direction. In this process, the students have fully exercised their ability to find and solve problems, and have made great progress in technology.

Although students may encounter various problems in the preparation process, the experience gained during this process is very valuable. Mr. Wang said that the students realized the importance of teamwork, because from the running-in process in the early stage of team formation, to the coordination process of division of labor and cooperation, and then to the decision-making process in the later stage of the project, the team members continued to strengthen the cohesion, understand the importance of cooperation, and benefit a lot。

As for why the RoboCup competition is so attractive to students, Mr. Wang said: "Overall, the Robocup is an international competition, which can open up students' international vision and increase their international experience. And the online format is very popular, which can reduce the time cost of high school students. An all-English environment can be challenging for students. As a result, their English proficiency has improved during the preparation process.

In terms of ability, compared with other robots, Pepper can test and exercise students' logical thinking ability. When considering how to make the robot behave more smoothly and naturally, students are asked to take into account all aspects of flow when designing the entire robot behavior script. In addition, in the process of using the instruction box programming, the flow line between the instruction boxes is relatively complicated and cumbersome, and the connection is a test of students' careful and patience, as well as the ability to control the entire process.

Teacher Wang said that at present, there are not many humanoid robot competitions in China, and there is a big gap between Pepper robot and Pepper robot. As a humanoid robot, the final project results can realize voice communication, face recognition and other functions, which is very satisfying for students!

Daily robot teaching

The reason why the high school affiliated to Zhejiang University can achieve such excellent results is inseparable from the active teaching in daily life. Teacher Wang said that Pepper robot will be used as a teaching aid in daily teaching, and when interacting with the lovely Pepper voice dialogue, face recognition and other functions, students will get the most intuitive artificial intelligence experience.

In the specific teaching application, Mr. Wang now uses the Choregraphe programming language to teach the basic concepts of programming, the use of instruction boxes, speech recognition, face recognition, picture and video display and other functions. After completing the course, students will be able to interact with the Pepper robot on their own.

For the biggest feature of Choregraphe, Mr. Wang again mentioned the wiring and logic between the instruction boxes. The line between each instruction box is the focus of the whole program, it relates to the process and logic of the whole program running, is not only the unique point of Choregraphe, but also its difficulty. In the process of learning, students often affect the operation of the program because of too much connection, so the instruction box in this part can increase the cultivation of students' thinking logic.

In the popularization of robot education, teacher Wang has also made a lot of efforts. After the introduction of information technology, Ms. Wang will also let the Pepper robot appear at the back of the classroom to interact with students during the class, exerting a subtle influence on students. The teacher felt that the students were actually curious about the Pepper robot, but they usually lacked ways to contact and understand it. Through the robot elective course and club activities, more and more students know about Pepper robot and fall in love with Pepper robot。

In addition to the entries in the competition, many of the students' ideas were realized on Pepper. For example, some students will use Pepper to introduce and recommend dishes in the cafeteria, even including simple ordering functions.

Not to be outdone, the robot club made use of programming language to make a new program of the robot club, and made a simple introduction and display of the club through Pepper.

Some students who are quite musical have made a song ordering system, which can be used to order songs through voice communication with Pepper.

Some students who are quite musical have made a song ordering system, which can be used to order songs through voice communication with Pepper. No matter whether these projects are simple or complex, no matter whether these projects are mature or immature, as long as the students gain something in the learning process, the technology has grown, and the cognition has been more extensive, it is the meaning of education.

Robot education is imperative

Based on the current national policy, artificial intelligence is already a key national strategy, and in the new generation of artificial intelligence development plan, it is also proposed to set up artificial intelligence-related courses in primary and secondary schools, which also strengthens the construction of related robot education.

After seeing many robots as a teacher of information technology subjects and as a coach of school science and technology competitions and robot competitions, Wang still believes that Pepper has interaction capabilities that other robots do not have. Pepper robot is not only cute in appearance, but also accompanied by action during communication, and its eyes have LED color demonstration, which is more anthropomorphic and easier to be accepted by beginners.

For programming learning, Wang teacher feel very necessary. For interested students, they can have a deeper understanding of this field, broaden their horizons and master cutting-edge technologies; For other students, it can help them develop their comprehensive qualities.

Education is the foundation of the country, students are the future of the country, and the development of robots and artificial intelligence is the general trend. In the future, artificial intelligence education will definitely be strongly supported, and there will be a better teaching environment. I hope these teenagers will find their true love and shine in the future.