Dr. Karsten Schulz

Capture the flag with AI+Robotics: New Free Course

We are very excited to announce the release of our latest Digital Technologies course on the hot topic of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. We've made it for year 5-8 students.

The course is currently free under our COVID-19 policy. It is suitable for remote and self-directed learning.

In this course, students get to know artificial intelligence through hands-on experiments. They help an AI navigate a little robot through colourful landscapes. In the process, students get to know artificial neural networks and learn how they can use sensor data to control the power flow to motors. We can't be sure, but we believe we've made the world's first interactive AI.

The course is highly immersive and interactive. The AI and the robot respond to user input, and students can design their own colourful tracks to play capture the flag.

We've added a few subtle sounds, but no annoying music. We celebrate success with balloons, and at the end of the course, there's a certificate waiting for the students.

Without coding, the course teaches about data input, processing and output. A little sensor under the robot watches the track and provides the red-green-blue values to the AI, which decides which of the two motors (or both) it needs to activate. The little AI only needs five perceptrons to do this job.

The course intentionally avoids explicit coding, as this only distracts from the more profound understanding of the inner workings of the AI, which is data-centric.

In the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies, this course addresses aspects of the following content descriptors in the years 5+6 band, but are also suitable to students in years 7+8:

ACTDIK015
ACTDIP017
ACTDIP019
ACTDIP020

The learning outcomes from this course are valuable to understand the fundamentals of artificial neural networks and how they can be interface with the real world; in the case of this course, a little robot.

After students have mastered this course, they can dive even deeper with our AI Course, which looks further at the inner workings and application of AI, including home automation, science, and anti-bullying.

As a teacher, you can track student progress from the comfort of the course statistics page. That's especially useful if your students are remote.