LEGO Engineer and RoboLab: Teaching Engineering with LabVIEW from Kindergarten to Graduate School*

TLDR

Tufts faculty have developed two software packages that combine LabVIEW and LEGO data‑acquisition systems to teach engineering from kindergarten to graduate school, enabling students aged 5–50 to build and program diverse projects that motivate learning of math and science. The paper explains how we designed software to complement the LEGO–LabVIEW projects by enabling automation and animation. The software extends LabVIEW’s capabilities to support kindergartners and LEGO bricks. We demonstrate that LabVIEW and LEGO data‑acquisition can be used to teach elementary science, freshman engineering, instrumentation, and experimentation, and that college seniors and graduate students employ the hardware and software to solve diverse data‑acquisition problems.

Abstract

For the past 6 years, faculty members at Tufts University have developed two different softwarepackages between LabVIEWTMand LEGOTMdata acquisition systems. These packages allow usto teach engineering with both LEGO bricks and LabVIEW to students from 5 to 50 years old. Theversatility of the hardware and software allow a wide variety of possibilities in what students canbuild and program–from robots and remote sensing devices to kinetic sculptures. As studentsdesign and build their projects, they are motivated to learn the math and science they need tooptimise their project. Both college students and kindergartners respond to this motivator. In thepaper, we explain how we designed software to complement these projects in allowing automationand animation. The software uses LabVIEW, extending its capabilities to kindergartners andLEGO bricks. Finally, we will show how we have used LabVIEW and LEGO data acquisition toteach elementary school science, freshman engineering, instrumentation and experimentation, andhow college seniors and graduate students have used both the hardware and software to solvevarious data acquisition problems.