What is GUPPIE School?
GUPPIE School is an educational program developed by Nonlinear and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (NASLab) at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. We offer programs that seek to interest and inspire students to engage in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) activities. What sets GUPPIE School apart is a bottom up approach. We begin by teaching the basics of programming, electronics, wiring, assembling and testing. We teach through the Engineering Process:
Our programs can be adapted and used for programs lasting a few days to semester long projects. Our programs are built for middle school age students and have been expanded to high-school and undergraduate levels. By going through the basics, students are ready to tackle two of our projects. GUPPIE, which the program is named after, is our underwater glider: an acronym which stands for Glider for Underwater Problem-solving and Promotion of Interest in Engineering. The other is the Neu-pulator, a robotic arm that is controlled by the electrical signals in muscles. Neu-pulator was developed by HIRoLab at Michigan Tech.
By offering hands-on robotic programs, we especially seek to engage girls, who can be interested in science and technology but are often disinterested in competition based robotics programs. Through our application-based program, students are presented with a meaningful context for robots.
Our introductory programs, as well as GUPPIE and Neu-pulator, use an Arduino board, an easy to learn hardware and software platform. Learn more about the Arduino: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction
Who we are
GUPPIE School was developed by members of NASLab (Nonlinear and Autonomous Systems Laboratory) and HIRoLab (Human-Interactive Robotics Lab) at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. Visit NASLab’s page and follow their latest updates here, and visit HIRoLab’s page here.
