Cellulo
Cellulo robots make abstract aspects of learning concrete, and act as intermediaries, facilitating and enriching educational activities.
The National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Robotics is an organization founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). It brings together researchers from all over the country to develop new human-centered robotic technologies with the aim of improving quality of life.
As part of the research projects undertaken with the support of the NCCR Robotics, teams from the Computer-Human Interaction Lab for Learning & Instruction (CHILI) and the Intelligent Systems Laboratory (LSRO) have developed the Cellulo robot.
Between 2014 and 2018, which corresponds to the second phase of the NCCR, the Cellulo project focused on developing a modular, hand-controlled robot designed to integrate transversally into all types of teaching and subjects.
In its first iteration, Cellulo enabled rich interactions with learners, offered a wide range of pedagogical activities, and seamlessly integrated into classrooms and universities.
This versatility has paved the way for the exploration of three fields of application:
- Gamified rehabilitation
- Educational activities
- Human-robotic swarm interaction for education
Cellulo for gamified rehabilitation
The aim of this project is to provide a tool for rehabilitation that is playful, practical, easy to use and intuitive, taking advantage of these tangible robots as agents and play objects.
The first game developed by the research team is based on the classic “Pacman” game, and is used to design exercises targeting arm motor skills. The game is being designed iteratively with the participation of stroke, brachial plexus and cerebral palsy patients (18 in total) and seven therapists at four different therapy centers. A number of game elements are designed to adjust speed, precision, range of motion and level of challenge.
Swarming human-robotic interactions for education
In 2021, thanks to funding provided by the “Grassroot Project” scheme set up by the NCCR Robotics, the Computer-Human Interaction Lab for Learning & Instruction and Reconfigurable Robotics Lab research teams collaborated to further develop the Cellulo concept.
Drawing on the expertise of these two laboratories and exploiting the results gathered around Cellulo, the team has developed the Cellulo Modulo, a revised and improved version of its predecessor aimed at increasing its integration capacity.
This new design features a configuration divided into three modules: the main module containing the means of locomotion and control between modules, a module containing the battery and finally, the so-called “user interaction” module, which enables the Cellulo Modulo to be paired with other tools or objects. The Cellulo-Mori, in particular, enables the Modular Origami Robot (Mori) designed by RRL to be connected to the Modulo Cellulo interaction module. Development of educational activities
Development of educational activities
As part of this field of application, CHILI researchers are developing educational activities that take advantage of Cellulo’s potential. In particular, they are investigating the role of tangible interactive robots in supporting letter writing for children with attention and visual-motor coordination problems.
Three features of the Cellulo robotic platform, in particular haptic information, autonomous movement and synchronized behavior of multiple robots, enhance multi-sensory feedback through the letter-writing process. The haptic features enable each child to receive instant individual feedback, the autonomous movement ensures that the robot reproduces the trace, while the synchronized behavior of the robots enables collaborative game design.
This learning activity, developed to demonstrate Cellulo’s potential in the classroom as part of standard school activities, is a so-called “semi-gamified” activity where students learn how atmospheric pressure results in winds through a robotic “hot-air balloon” simulation over Europe. There are points of high and low pressure of different intensities, which respectively create outward and inward winds at a certain distance; the strength of these winds decreases with the square of the distance. The wind force at a given point on the map is then calculated as the vectorial sum of the wind forces created by all the pressure points.
This activity has been developed to teach children the usefulness of a coordinate system to describe the position of an object. Through a game played in groups of 3, students seek guidance in finding an astronaut lost in space.
