Smart Motors is an educational robotics project aimed at making artificial intelligence and machine learning accessible to elementary and middle school students, particularly in under-resourced classrooms. The system offers low-cost, standalone, and trainable smart motors that can be programmed through user interaction without the need for traditional coding, fostering hands-on, tactile learning experiences. Research associated with Smart Motors has been presented at various conferences, highlighting its effectiveness in introducing supervised machine learning concepts to young learners and its potential to reduce barriers to entry in STEM education.
To date, over a dozen teachers have used Smart Motors, but most did so to teach Science and English-Language Arts curriculum. Others have used Smart Motors to achieve standards in Math and Engineering, often using design challenges, which are referred to as placemats (link to tufts resources page at smartmotors.ai). While initially designed for 2nd - 5th grade students, the smart motors have been used with students from Kindergarten to 6th grade and during the school day, after-school, and during summer programming.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-2119174, in collaboration with Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach . Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.