Robotics Class in Design Education and its Achievements

This paper provides an outline of the robotics class offered in the Product Design Course at the School of Design, Sapporo City University, Japan. Recently, advances in mechatronics components have led to the development of various types of robots, including home and entertainment robots, in addition to factory robots. For these robots, appearance design and expression function through movement or interaction are more critical than control ability in accomplishing the assigned tasks. This means that a robot designer should approach both design and functions. The author offered the robotics class in the first semester of the 4th-year Product Design Course at the School of Design, Sapporo City University, Japan. Students in this class were required to develop an actual entertainment robot via group work with three or four members. A development theme was given before the work assignment, and the design concept was required to align with this theme. During group work, all members were required to integrate their individual skills into the robot. The group work began with idea development for the robot design, involving contributions from all members. The design concept of each robot was considered based on the idea sketches, brainstorming, and investigations via the internet and library books. Thereafter, the robot appearance design as well as motion and interactive function were decided. Students designed the robot’s appearance using various design tools and motion with interactive systems using mechatronics components learned in the previous year’s “Mechatronics” class. The outline of the curriculum and the “Robotics” class was first explained, followed by an overview of the robot development tools and related classes. Finally, some selected achievements were presented, and the class was evaluated based on the results of a class evaluation rubric.