The Educational Robotics projects aims to design and build novel human-robot interactions for learning. The Cellulo robots allow visualizing in a tangible manner what is intangible in learning, and mediating learning activities.
We envision making robots ubiquitous, namely a natural part of the classroom ecosystem, in order to shift the focus from the robot to the activity.
Cellulo robots can be imagined as swarm robots, each of them very simple and affordable, that function on large sheets of paper containing the learning activities.
Cellulo robots allow to grab and move a planet to see what happens to its orbit, or vibrate a molecule with your hands to see how it behaves. As part of this project, the team designed learning activities for topics ranging from geometry to emergent behaviours, using Cellulo robots to engage students.
Social robots have been used in various learning activities as a peer to collaborate with, as a mentor or a mediator in a learning activity and even as a protégé for the students to teach to.
As part of this project, learning activities are designed and developed with social robots for topics ranging from handwriting to computational thinking. The focus is on designing real-time robot behaviour and adaptation/personalization strategies which support learning and rely on run-time student data analysis.