RoboCupJunior for promoting STEM education, 21st century skills, and technological advancement through robotics competition

RoboCupJunior is an international educational robotics initiative, aiming to promote STEM content and skill learning among participating youth through educational robotics competition inaugurated in 2000. What makes RoboCupJunior quite unique is its relationship with RoboCup which aims to promote robotics and AI research, by offering a publicly appealing, but formidable challenge including development of soccer robots, search and rescue robots, and robots functions at home and at work. This paper introduces a case of RoboCupJunior and the effectiveness of its practice for enhancing learning of STEM contents and skills for innovation and creativity among participating students. It presents the survey results from one of the World Championships held in 2012, the anecdotal and personal account of participating US students on their learning experience from their participation in 2013 World Championship, and participating students' technological and innovative contributions to highlight the impacts RoboCupJunior has had through over a decade of its practice. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.