Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with a Drone: a Game-Development Approach to Promote AI and Robotics to Students in Engineering
Chiraz Trabelsi, Steeve Franklin Yagapin, Sylvain Bertrand, Lionel Prévost · IFAC-PapersOnLine · 2024
Drones are aerial robotic platforms that have applications in various domains of work and life. They are well appreciated by young people, especially when using them to play games. Mixing learning and entertainment has proven to be an efficient way of motivating students to better understand scientific curricula. This paper proposes a game development-based approach aiming to promote robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to prospective engineering students and contribute to their motivation to pursue curricula in these fields. The game considered in this paper is a ”Rock-Paper-Scissors” (RPS) game involving an autonomous drone in interaction with human players. It was implemented in the context of a student project at ESIEA, a graduate school of Engineering in France, in connection with Robotics and AI curricula. The RPS drone has been used as a demonstrator during an open day at ESIEA, as a way of attracting prospective students by showing them how fun and full of learning outcomes projects in these fields can be. The main features of the RPS drone are presented in the paper, as well as elements of the curricula and learning outcomes related to this project. We also provide feedback from prospective students on the open day, and we present a preliminary study of the impact of the proposed approach on student motivation.