Design and implementation of an educational robot manipulator

Nowadays, dropping out of engineering courses occurs in practically all universities of the world. Over the past few years, active learning has been recognized by the educational community as the most effective learning method. In this paper we discuss the educational experience involving the design and development of a low-cost robot manipulator with six degrees of freedom, to motivate undergraduate students of control and automation engineering and mechanical engineering, who attended the robotics elements subject in 2012 and 2013. Moreover, the students´ activities during the execution of the work are presented as well as the results of their evaluation of the methodology proposed.