DroPong: Enthusing Learners About Control Engineering by Revisiting the Pong Game with Aerial and Ground Drones*

This paper proposes an adapted version of the classic Pong game, tailored for educational purposes and illustrated with two ground mobile robots and one drone, therefore called DroPong. The goal of this paper is twofold: (i) motivating students to pursue within a Control Engineering specialization, by involving engineering students in the development of game-inspired diverting Robotic platforms for teaching and research; (ii) educating future generations by increasing the visibility of Science, more particularly Control Engineering and Robotics, via popularizing science activities for children during open-day events and science festivals. The developed open-access resources are available on a dedicated repository.

I. Introduction

Finding strategies to motivate and enthuse students is a key challenge for teachers [1], [2]. It is well known that motivated students display pro-activeness, creativity, engagement and goal-oriented behaviors, with a notable progress during the learning process. Numerous pedagogical approaches have been developed to modify and adapt teaching methods, e.g., project-based learning, flipped classroom or other blending learning strategies, gamification, use of online and open educational resources, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Massive Open Online Laboratories (MOOLs), etc. More specifically, games in the classroom can change the way students approach learning, adding more interaction and fun, while being closer to real world feeling than classic (generally overloaded) academic scenarios. Gamification and serious games (e.g., [3]–[7]) have been recognized as efficient practice to improve the learners' motivation and engagement. Such game-based learning tools are now considered at different levels, from kids to graduate students activities.