The Importance of Hands-on Experiences in Robotics Courses

Hardware-based courses, like Robotics, require a lot of laboratory practice. Traditional laboratory exercises on a robotics course are held in a robotics laboratory equipped with proper hardware. Today, besides this kind of traditional laboratories, modern trends are virtual and remote laboratories where simulators are used. In this paper our experiences on the Robotics course, at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje, with respect to using both traditional and modern laboratories, is presented. This Robotics course is introduced and in more detail the hands-on activities students have on the course are described. We have observed that students' hands-on experience in the laboratory improves their overall score on the course. The results of their performances that support this statement are given in this paper. Also their hands-on experience improves their ability and skills for their independent work on robotics projects. Some examples of the students' projects are presented here.