Project-based learning (PBL) is effective for teaching students about the engineering design process, as it leads to higher educational effectiveness among lower-grade students. In this paper, we introduced an original PBL program that involved the use of an autonomous mobile robot in a rescue robot contest, and we assessed its educational effectiveness among several categories of students who participated in the contest. The results demonstrated that essential abilities for information engineering could be acquired by participating in the contest, and both the PBL program and contest provided a good educational environment for lower-grade students.
