Sixth-graders make... robots

The Ministry of Education hosted an exhibition of educational robots presented by fifth- and sixth-graders of the Children’s Engineering Academy boarding school, which is a public educational institution. This institution has existed for just two years, but its students have already demonstrated significant progress. Training schemes and special computer programs help the children to master the basic design skills. According to the Academy’s director Dmytro Borovyk, educational robotics allows teachers to reveal technological talents in children and develop them.

The students are also taught basic programming skills. “Assembling a robot is not enough, as it must also be programmed. Our children do it themselves. They understand what movements it has to perform and incrementally upload to the system robot’s required actions and responses to sensors and external stimuli,” teacher of computer science and robotics Natalia Voftyvinska told us.

The children’s robot designs include a scout robot, equipped with a camera. It can move over long distances and broadcast video from the camera to the laptop, which it is connected to via Wi-Fi. This robot was created by sixth-graders Diana and Dmytro. “This device can, for example, help people to find an unexploded shell. We plan to make hands for it, so that this robot could move his finds,” Dmytro Martynenko told us.

Martynenko’s another invention is a model of solar power plant. “The device is controlled by a special program,” he said. “The plant produces six amperes of voltage in an hour. Over a day, it can produce enough energy to power a light bulb.”

The biggest robot of those designed at the academy looks like an elephant. It can go back and forth and raise its trunk, its inventor Vitalii told us. “Using its trunk, this robot can take an object, carry it for some distance and then put it in a certain place. It is very nice, and people like its short tail as well,” the boy said.

The Children’s Engineering Academy, founded in 2013, has now 40        children enrolled, all fifth- and sixth-graders. Borovyk stressed that the institution aimed to identify and support children who liked inventing and design activities.