There are many necessities that need to be improved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education. The robotics represents a promising educational tool. Nowadays, robotic education tools arise with the aim of promoting the innovation and the motivation of the students during the learning process. Robots are becoming more common in our daily life; thus, it is important to integrate robots at all levels of our society. The robotics requires several skills such as systems thinking, programming mindset, active learning, mathematics, science, judgment and decision making, good communication, technology de-sign, complex problem solving and persistence. These skills can be easily developed using robotics educational tools. This paper presents the evolution from a simple remote 4-wheeled robot to a scaled platform currently under development. These developed platforms are intended to be used for educational purposes in the context of STEM education.

Keywords: education, programming, robotics, STEM

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is a power-full tool which it is being more popular these days.¹ Additionally, the robotics also provides an attractive manner to transform boring concepts into an amusing learning process. Robotic kits facilitate the ease with which students can make connections among STEM disciplines.² Games and simple materials are a good combination with the aim of engaging students about computer science fundamentals. The article³ describes a set of learning activities that were found suitable for non-formal learning environments. In Yoshihara,⁴ the authors present a programming education session through the production of the game program using Scratch as a programming environment and Nano board AG as a sensor board. The robotics is being used as the modernization and improvement for most of processes. This occurs as result of robots can be easily integrated within the current industrial processes.⁵ Furthermore, the robotics has become an important tool for the students to be involved in STEM. Nevertheless, the introduction to the robotics is not a simple task. First, the robotics combines mechanics, electricity, electronics, and computer science with the purpose of designing and building robotics applications. Robots are programmable electromechanical machines that include sensors to make decisions and adapt to different situations. Hence, a robotics educational platform promotes easily these skills.

On the other hand, technologies are evolving day by day with an increasing speed. Now, the students must be familiar with the technology and the way to get knowledge about programming and use this kind of devices as they future professional career opportunities. Every day people is using Internet in order to connect to other people or with the aim of accessing a wide range of information and as well as sharing their ideas. According to,⁶ in the IoT (Internet of Things) sphere, Things can be identified and connected. After that, they will exchange information and they will make decisions by themselves. There are lots of IoT based applications which are being developed in many different fields. An example is⁷ within the medical services field, where it is demonstrated how to collect, integrate, and interoperate IoT data flexibly to provide support to emergency medical services. Furthermore, in Gupta⁸ the authors presented IoT applications in health care domain and connected car domain along with market segmentation. IoT is just a beginning in this digital era to make our life better. Authors are working on applying artificial intelligence techniques on IoT data for making predictions in the domain connected car and healthcare applications.

Throughout the development of the master thesis,⁹ the development of a four-wheel robot was carried out to be controlled through the web. This construction includes DC (Direct Current) motors, lights and Wifi. The robot controller is an Arduino UNO board. The power supply used is a LiPo battery for the controller and the DC motors. Furthermore, other LiPo battery was used to power the WiFi camera. When having to drive four DC motors, an Arduino Shield has been used to control continuous motors stacked on top of the Arduino. Figure 1 shows an image of the 4-wheel robot. This robot is controlled using a web browser hosted on a PC (Personal Computer). A demonstration is provided in Youtube (https://youtu.be/oI64VkhQAfM).

Figure 1 Remote 4-wheeled Arduino based robot.

The state of the art of the robotics has contributions both by private companies and by individuals, as well as FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based systems. In robotics, there are very different fields: industrial, healthcare, educational and even hobby. Data which is common in the FPGA-based systems, since in recent years more and more sectors including such devices in their products. To date, it is very often to find control systems based on microcontrollers because of its easy accessibility and its simplicity which does not require great knowledge. Meanwhile, the electronic design using FPGA requires