The Cognitive Robotics department at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (ME) had already developed a versatile and upgradable mobile robot for its bachelor educational programme: the MIRTE Pioneer. For its master’s programme, they wanted to add an even more advanced robot to the family, one that is more powerful and with a grappling arm. “The new robot should fit the requirements of several master courses,” Martin Klomp says. “This way, students spent most of their time on their learning objectives, rather than familiarising themselves with a different robot each time.”
Just like its smaller version, this MIRTE Master would have a low-cost, completely open-source design. “Partly because it offers the opportunity to understand the robot not only at a superficial level but all the way down to its core. And partly because it takes a lot of time and effort to develop the associated educational materials. It is very disruptive if a commercial educational robot is no longer supported or even taken off the market.”
A robot in four months
They hired teaching assistants to handle most of the mechanics and electronics. They also used the Open Education Stimulation Fund (OESF) funding to extend the contract of a software developer who had already worked on the Pioneer. “The team was very effective, building a first version of the robot in only four months. They had to be, as we had planned to use thirty of these in our teaching.”
Having groups of students work with the robot and develop software for it revealed various minor issues that have all been addressed by now. Even better, combining the work of some of these groups yielded a simulation platform of the MIRTE Master robot.
“Nothing beats hands-on experience with a real robot, but this was on our to-do list anyway for after the OESF project was completed.”
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Martin Klomp,Lecturer and Lead MIRTE robot, Mechanical Engineering
Outsourcing a redesign
Being partially funded by the Robotics department, the new robot would have been built anyway. But the OESF funding accelerated the process of making its design openly available. “The University of Copenhagen is set to build several MIRTE Master robots using the design we made available on GitHub. We will revise the design guidelines based on their experience.”
Open education is bearing even more fruit. “There are some design choices in the hardware we would like to address, making it easier to build the robot. The Inholland University of Applied Sciences will task their students to come up with a redesign. Next to this they will build several MIRTE Masters to use in their own teaching.”
There are some design choices in the hardware we would like to address, making it easier to build the robot.
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Martin Klomp,Lecturer and Lead MIRTE robot, Mechanical Engineering
Open education taking off
The MIRTE team has furthermore joined hands with the University of Groningen and two universities of applied sciences (Hanze and The Hague) to put in an application for a Dutch open science call. The idea being that these partners will receive MIRTE robots for their education in return for making their teaching material openly available. “We are planning to do the same ourselves. Open education provides a powerful platform for fostering enthusiasm for science and technology through robotics.”
In October 2022, the Open Science Programme launched the Open Education Stimulation Fund to enable TU Delft lecturers to innovate their courses with open education. Staff across all faculties were encouraged to submit a proposal for Open Education-related projects for funding up to EUR 20,000 and with a maximum project term of 1 year.
