Deliverables
The LoT project has developed a fully integrated hardware/software system for the teaching of modern physics in secondary education utilizing free choice activities of the students and transforming everyday school life into playful learning. It have been extensively used by 10 teachers and 200 students for over a year during two test runs and two final run phases in 5 different schools in four different European countries (Greece, Germany, Austria and Italy). It has been also demonstrated through the EU VAL NET network in a larger audience of teachers and students during workshops and other similar activities that were organized by this project in Italy, Austria, Holland, Denmark and Ireland. The system has been also disseminated and demonstrated in many international exhibitions and other EU related activities. The system is currently in full operation and during the lifetime of the project has been evaluated by an independent group of experts with very good results.
The basic parts of the system are the following:
The Base Station Set that receives all the wirelessly transmitted data from the peripheral units and sends them to the workstation in which the user interface is installed. The base station is located nearby the system's workstation with which is connected through the RS232 port. The ball module set, which is a specially constructed ball with an embedded accelerometer sensor in it that transmits the accelerometer's data wirelessly to the base station. The student set, which is the basic equipment that the student is wearing during the experiments or the other activities. The student set consists of various independent parts, which are namely the following: The belt assembly module, which is the main component of the student set. The belt assembly consists of the body accelerometer sensor, the student transmission module (STM) that establishes the radio communication with the base station at 433MHz and the body area network module (BAN), which collects wirelessly all data from the Arm and Leg Accelerometer modules. So the student set has also one arm accelerometer module and one leg accelerometer module that record the acceleration of the student's arm and leg and transmit it to the BAN on the student's belt via the local body area network at 833MHz. Finally there is also a polar belt module for the heart rate measurement of the student.
All the data recorded from the sensors are collected via the BAN and transmitted through the STM to the base station. The ball and the STM are synchronized and so all the accelerometer data can be correlated in the workstation. The software platform that has been developed receives, stores and processes all the sensor data in a near real time basis (it receives packets of sensor data every 10sec). The whole system is also synchronized with the local positioning system (LPS, see also result no1 of this TIP) and thus the whole activity can be correlated with the video camera frames.
The system that has been developed in terms of the LoT project is a very innovative educational system, which was for the first time introduced into normal school curriculums during the lifetime of the LoT project. In the last and more extensive phase of the final runs of the project, 10 fully operational pre-industrial prototype systems have been produced and used for over 6 months by the schools. Students performed various types of experiments from typical physics laboratory experiments to extreme activities such as judo, trampoline and skiing always using the system. The results were very impressive and the system proved extremely reliable with minimum malfunctions even though it was sometimes used under extreme conditions. All these activities were recorded and were later analysed in class during the lessons. The whole system including the software platform, is very easy to be installed and used and can be operated with typical power requirements. Its cost is acceptable, but there are further margins for its decrease in case the owners decide to proceed to the next phase of its exploitation. It should be noted that while the educational application of the system is clear and evident, during the last year of the project and through the various dissemination activities, the system has proven to be extremely useful for certain other types of applications. These applications are connected with sports activities and sports training. The use of the arm, body and leg accelerometer modules could be very helpful for the training of certain athletes such as tennis players, runners etc. The ball autonomously could also be used in team sports such as volleyball for the improvement of the athlete's performance. In conclusion the LoT system is a highly innovative system, which has already proven its use in the educational market sector and can very easily expand its applications to other very promising markets (sports and recreation).
The LPS system is an innovative 3D positioning system suitable for educational applications. It can be used for conducting indoor or outdoor school experiments and combines playful learning with teaching laws of Newton physics. The system is simple in its construction easy to implement and calibrate and it is accompanied from special developed software that can process the captured data. It has been extensively used for over a year in field trials in four schools in Greece Germany and Austria with very promising results. The architecture of the system is briefly the following.
The system is composed 2-CCD cameras, which observe the area within which the experiment or the activity will take place. The typical test area for the 2-camera system is 10mX10mX3m. This means that the system will be able to identify and record the position of an object (ball) at least within this area. The accuracy of the system for the above field of view is around 5-10cm. Both cameras are connected to a PC, which is located nearby. The system records the trajectory of the ball and the relevant players or any other type of activity during the proposed experiment. The cameras are connected to a personal computer through the parallel ports. Two frame grabber PC cards are used. Each camera has the ability to record 50 frames/sec. The proposed system will be able to capture 25 active frames per second. This is due to the parallel frame grabber's architecture that is utilized. Since both cameras must be synchronized and each frame must be recorded at the same time, the final capacity of the system is diminished from the 50/sec frames of the individual camera to the 25/sec. Additionally to the position of the observation object, the relevant time parameter is recorded simultaneously for each frame. By this way a few minutes video with the experiment/activity can be produced. For the presentation and the processing of the recorded frames, a user-friendly software sub-module has been developed within the software platform of the whole Lab of Tomorrow project. The student will be able to recover to the PC screen the frames from both the cameras, which are referring to the same time parameter.
Then the student will identify the object in each frame and with the help of the mouse will mark it producing the relevant set of x, y, z coordinates. With the use of these coordinates, a software program developed by ICCS, produces the absolute coordinates (xo, yo, zo) of the ball/object. The coordinates will be written on a file along with the time parameter. Having recorded all these parameters, the student will be able to reconstruct the trajectory of the object. The acceleration data coming from the sensors that are embedded in the ball or on the students (please also refer to result no2), can be also viewed and combined with the data of the LPS helping by this way the student to make very interesting observations with experiments that involve free choice activities. It should be noticed that the LPS system is fully synchronized with the rest system that is described in result no 2 and this enables the user to make optimum use of all the acquired data Summarizing, the proposed software program not only is able to reconstruct the trajectory of the observation element, but it is also able to calculate and present graphically the other related parameters (time, acceleration etc.).
The LPS system is a laboratory prototype system that is able to reconstruct the 3D movement of any object within a certain field of view during an experiment or a joyful activity of the students with a very good accuracy. It is a very helpful educational tool for the teaching of physics in schools with the use of real life experiments. 3D movements can be analysed and this is unique because all the commercially available similar products can track objects only in two dimensions. The software of the system has been built in such a way in order to guide and facilitate the student to reconstruct the object's trajectory. The only disadvantage of the system that has been identified during its trials is that the set-up and calibration time needed for its proper operation is extended. This problem can be a draw back for the installation and the operation of the system in an everyday basis within a normal school curriculum. In the future, the system should be more easily set-up and calibrated and this whole process should be performed from the school staff with a standardized procedure.
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