Using soft robotics as a medium for gender accessible STEM education of preschoolers

Using soft robotics as a medium for gender accessible STEM education of preschoolers

Prakash, Shreyas (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

van de Geer, S.G. (mentor)
Scharff, R.B.N. (graduation committee)
Pennings, Ellen (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

2020-08-28

Only 35 percent of the recent graduates are women. The figures are even lower for traditionally male dominated workforces such as engineering and robotics as women constitute only 12 percent of the engineering workforce. It is quite evident that we cannot ignore the gender equation when it comes to bringing in more equity in the workforce. As even the toys are heavily gendered, to take an example. Right from the way girls are prompted to play with Barbies and boys with G.I. Joes, this societal conditioning influences their future interest towards professions. In order to counter act the disparity in the STEM professions, a play based learning approach through the medium of soft robotics is used to get preschoolers equally interested towards the field of robotics in a gender-accessible manner. Silly Stompers consists of a reconfigurable base to which wide range of soft actuator blocks could be connected in various ways to create custom body movements. This provides a very tangible, screen-free, open ended experience for pre-schoolers through a fun way by allowing creating to create various pumping patterns. This provides compatibility with LEGO providing more open-ended outcomes. The learning outcomes mainly focus on constructive play and role play for pre-schoolers through the medium of soft inflatable actuators.

Soft Robotics
gender bias
Lego bricks
Soft actuators
education

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:81155d92-38e7-4eaf-9782-ff442cd84477

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Shreyas Prakash