Robotic Outreach to Attract Primary and Secondary Students to Engineering

Graduate students and faculty at Auburn University’s Department of ECE developed an automated NerfTM launcher for STEM outreach. This robot was created by the authors as a final design project for a robotics course. The robot detects a reflective target using infrared light and tosses a NerfTM ball at the target. The robot was initially demonstrated to a Title 1 middle school robotics group working on a competition robot at the university. This opportunity allowed for a preliminary outreach event that was well received by the students and teachers: they all expressed enhanced interest in STEM as the design and design process was explained. This response inspired the further use of the robot as an outreach and recruitment apparatus. To make the device more effective for outreach, targeted instructional approaches for use with different age ranges were created. These approaches vary in technical level and duration as appropriate. The outreach events were shown to increase the interest level of students in STEM fields through anonymous preand postdemonstration surveys. The primary goal of the outreach program is to target Title 1 schools and other under-served communities.