Sorting Materials Using Programmable Lego© Robot: An Educational Activity to Promote Sustainability among Youngsters

Educational robotics is a powerful, flexible, teaching and learning tool. At the same time, it can be used for presenting scientific concepts and it can help to develop scientific thinking, inquiry practice, information literacy competences, and attitudes and accountability as well as the environmental awareness. In the framework of the European Green Deal and the national project “Change the Game: Playing to Prepare for the Challenges of a Sustainable Society”, we engaged groups of students in two learning paths focused on building and programing robots able to face the material recognition and recycling. The pathways were developed in two weeks’ extracurricular stage in institutes of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR) and were based on colour sensing, deal with the sorting of different materials: (i) plastic caps and (ii) mosaic tiles. Lego© Spike Essential kit were used as hardware and software tools. The learning paths began with an introduction to the scientific topic. During the two weeks, meetings were organized with other researchers and experts and the pathway continue with the mechanical construction and programming of the robot. Finally, the students presented their creations to the public. In the case of the robot sorting caps, colour selection allows the efficient recycling of plastic (HDPE) for the production of new objects with well-defined colour characteristics. As regards mosaic tiles, they are often obtained from production residues that are marketed in the bags of multicolour fragments. The need therefore arose to automatically separate the glass tiles based on their colour to relieve the artist from this tedious task. Different convincing solutions both in the mechanical assembly and in the software development, have been obtained thanks to the creative work of the groups. At the end of their extracurricular stages the students have been asked to run a workshop in which they presented their robot projects to small groups of other students and helped them build and program the robots, thus reinforcing their skills and transferring them to their peers, in a virtuous learning circle