ITER Robots: Introducing School Students to Robotics and Project Management

Jean-Pierre Martins (1) , Julien Hillairet (2) , Sylvie André-Mitsialis (3) , Rosa Aspilcueta (1) , Marie Alfonsi (3) , Alain Barbuti (2) , Alexandre Berne (2) , Jean-Michel Bottereau (3) , Vincent Bruno (2) , Jean-Baptiste Civet (4) , Laban Coblentz (1) , Jennifer Colombet (3) , Hans Decamps (1) , Fabien R Ferlay (2) , Jean-Pierre Friconneau (2) , Delphine Keller (2) , Olivier Lagay (4) , Véronique Marfaing (3) , Lorena Martinez (3) , Christian Merveille (3) , Bruno Pélissier (4) , Rolland Rajaonarivony (4) , Xavier Regal-Mezin (2) , Christophe Roux (2) , Sophie Soufflet-Jacquis (3) , Shira Tabachnikoff (1) , Benoit Vincent (2) , Sébastien Vives (2)

1 ITER - ITER organization
2 IRFM - Institut de Recherche sur la Fusion par confinement Magnétique
3 AIF - Agence ITER France
4 Ministère de l'éducation nationale

Originally developed by ITER, CEA, Agence ITER France and the French Ministry of Education, the ITER Robots Contest is an engineering robotics based competition open to high school and primary students across the South of France. The challenge is to build a reduced scale robot to simulate a maintenance situation inside the future ITER Tokamak machine, namely the remote handling of components in a hostile environment. The ITER Robots Contest has grown in popularity, with more than 600 participants in the 2019 edition. As part of their technical and science curriculum, students work in teams, for over 6 months, to acquire technical skills and knowledge on robotics and fusion energy, solve problems, develop communication skills, and run their projects. This contest corresponds to the high-school educational "cross disciplinary approach", from technology to French, foreign languages, as well as history from science to general international knowledge. The contest day, each team`s robot undertakes a number of tasks evaluated by jury composed of ITER and CEA engineers. Teams are also evaluated on communication skills and fusion energy knowledge.

Mots clés: robotics; communication; education; school; STEM; Remote Handling; Nuclear Fusion; ITER

Domaines: Plasmas; Electromagnétisme; Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]; Education; Physique : vulgarisation [physics.pop-ph]

Jean-Pierre Martins, Julien Hillairet, Sylvie André-Mitsialis, Rosa Aspilcueta, Marie Alfonsi, et al.. ITER Robots: Introducing School Students to Robotics and Project Management. Physics Education, 2020, ⟨10.1088/1361-6552/ab5ce1⟩. ⟨cea-02455442⟩