An Educational Platform for Cybersecurity in Cyberphysical Systems

Overview

Maryland public schools are to offer a course in cybersecurity to high school students. On completion of the course, students may earn credits for introductory-level university courses in Cybersecurity and Computer Science. The project is a unity based educational robot simulator which is designed to infuse enthusiasm in programming and cybersecurity awareness. The students are not expected to have any prior cybersecurity or programming background. Our task was to design the robot simulator which can be used using a bash shell interpreter by students.

Objectives

Our objective was to build a robot simulator which helps infuse enthusiasm for programming and cybersecurity in high school students.

Approach

– Have weekly meetings with the sponsor and advisor to give an update and receive feedback.
– Use the AGILE software development method.
– Use our own learning experiences.
– Easy to control Robot using a bash shell.
– An interpreter with basic commands which simulate an experience of writing a programming language.
– Parsing errors check for to ensure the integrity of the language.
– Record user data for the teacher to oversee and check student progress.
– The scenarios are planned to be designed which include a pre-determined cybersecurity threat to the
user’s robots.
– Using elements which induce curiousness into the game to keep students interested
– Allow students to take control of the robot in an open scenario to give them space to understand the
interpreter.

Outcomes

– Students can use a unity-based robot simulator in which they can control their robot using a bash shell interpreter to do tasks in scenarios and open worlds. Bash shell interpreter which uses a basic idea of a programming language to simulate the experience of a programmer.
– A teacher can set up students, oversee the robot and record the progress of students. Overall the robot simulator is created and ready for students to use robots in an open scenario and perfectly designed to infuse enthusiasm for programming.