Our team, TriRoboNauts, is oriented to Inquiry based Learning for Space Awareness through Robotics. We built a project, "A Mars colony" in order the further exploration of our Milky Way. We believe that Astronomy and Space can be approached better, through robotics hands-on activities. Our project was ranked 2nd in the National Educational Robotics competition 2016, https://tinyurl.com/ybppo67t , in Athens, and had been selected from over 800 participants from 36 countries as one of the ten best StarT projects in 2017, http://start.luma.fi/en/ideas/the-best-of-start-2017/
Team Name: TriRoboNauts (Trikala Robotic Astronauts)
1. Fotis Roumeliotis
2. Nektarios Siomos
3. Stefania Spahou
4. Vasilis Staridas
5. Galini Stafila
Teacher-Coach: Eleftheria Karagiorgou, Computer Science and Robotics teacher
Our project is a Mars colony, that includes:
1. Space ship launch base
2. Space ship
3. Communication centre- Satellite dish
4.Greenhouse with control centre for the temperature, the light and the conditions for the growth of our vegetables (like spinach)
5. Oxygen producing centre for the greenhouse
6. Communication satellite and meteorological satellite
7. Stone robotic collector from Olympus mountain that converts stones into soil for the greenhouse
8. Rover for the transportation of stones
9. Solar panels for producing energy
The space colony on Mars is the start for the Milky Way exploration. All the above were built with Lego and Lego WeDo
Inspiration for our project:
• the text “Fantastic trips into space”, from the Greek school book of 5th grade which is part of the Greek book of Rena Petropoulou, "Ο Σοφούλης ο Ψαλιδούλης και η απόδραση στο Διάστημα".•
• the project "Popeye on Mars", which has been developed by Greek scientists and the main idea is the building of a greenhouse for the cultivation of spinach on Mars. The specific project has been presented in a NASA contest.
The whole project was based on a lot of testings and changes. You can see our video of the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ogB0Djf54A (in English), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mciSHkxI7A (in Greek)
The project doesn't end here: We organised an "Asteroid Day" event, in order to learn more about Asteroids and their impact to our Solar System. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnOrfEBtX_c
In our learning diary, you can see more about our activities: https://padlet.com/kareri/trirobonauts
The objectives of the project "Building a Mars colony with Robotics" are:
1. raising Space awareness through Robotics
2. learning to collaborate in a team
3. learning through Inquiry based learning
4. learning coding through Robotics, with Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/)
5. learning about storytelling, by using our imagination for the scenario of the project
The instruments used in our project are:
1. Lego WeDo+motors+sensors
2. Internet for searching informations about space and Mars
3. Scratch environment for coding
4. Windows Movie Maker for the videos
5. Learning Diary-Padlet (https://padlet.com)
Through our videos, we can calculate the interaction with users, since we can measure the views of our videos and the like/dislike preferences
I don' t know if others are interested in our project or in our team, what I know is that we have passion and love for what we are doing, as a team. I want to believe that the students -members of the team see some other aspects of STEAM that in formal education is very rare to happen. I hope that being members of TriRoboNauts will change their lives and potential for the better!
