EAGER: A Gateway Drone for High School Students

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

The aim of this proposal is to broaden access to computer science and robotics education for high school students in the New England area, with a particular emphasis on students from underrepresented groups. This award will allow us to distribute 300 low-cost Raspberry Pi/Python autonomous drones to students; train teachers to teach an introductory robotics course to the students; and assess the impact of this program at attracting and retaining underrepresented groups to STEM. This project will have an impact on hundreds of high school students in the New England area. The investigators will have a close collaboration with two local high schools in the Providence area, the Providence Career and Technical Academy (PCTA) and the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET). In year 2, the investigators will recruit 14 more sites, with 20 students at each site for a total of 300 drones. This project will scale the drone program to more students, and pilot a model that can grow even more in the future. This project will test the hypothesis that distributing autonomous drone kits to high school students will increase the participation and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM. Providing a hands-on project that teaches students to build and fly an autonomous drone will increase the student's participation in technical fields, increase the rate of college enrollments, and provide essential skills. The investigators will use Brown's accessible open-source curriculum for autonomy education that emphasizes hands-on experience. The drone is equipped with a monocular camera and actuators, and performs all processing on board with a Raspberry Pi 3. As a result, the base station machine can be any computer with a web browser, so the program can run using a school's existing computing resources, without requiring software installation. This pilot project will enable hundreds of high school students to build drones. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.