Empower Mats: The need for accessible tools for blind and visually impaired students for robotics

Empower Mats: The need for accessible tools for blind and visually impaired students for robotics

Empower Mats: Facilitating the participation of blind or visually impaired students in competitive robotics programs.

Through a grant from a national foundation, and in collaboration with The Maryland School for The Blind, TechBrick Education, LET’S GO Boys & Girls, and other national institutions, we are developing and testing surface technologies that can be applied to standard robotics competition and training mats.

These solutions will facilitate the participation of students who are blind or visually impaired who are largely excluded from these types of activities. If they do not have an opportunity to engage in STEM based programs, they will not be likely to pursue STEM careers.

Combined with development of accessible programing environments for EV3 and similar systems, we hope to facilitate the participation of students who are blind or visually impaired in FIRST LEGO League, Dash & Dot, BeeBots, SumoBots, and similar table-top robotics challenges.

The technology we are developing will provide tactile guidance to locations, paths, and have braille descriptions where necessary. The goal is to create a mat that allows the all students to participate while not interfering with the robots of other teams.

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