Fanny Riedo

Thymio II, a robot that grows wiser with children

Thymio II is a small robot developed for education. It aims at offering a wide public the possibility to understand the basics of robotics and programming. To achieve this, it aims at being appealing to a large age range and serve as a medium for several types of activities. In this study, we tested it in five different workshops of the EPFL Robotics Festival with various activities. The workshops target different age groups and the participants can control the robot via different means: built-in buttons, graphical programming and text programming. At the end of the activities, participants were asked to fill a short survey to give their impressions about the robot, their appreciation of the tasks and their motivations to take part. We could show through this feedback that Thymio II appeals to young children as much as to teenagers, to both girls and boys, and allows them to have fun and learn new things.

Teaching a core CS concept through robotics

We implemented single-session workshops using the Thymio-II--a small, self-contained robot designed for young students, and VPL--a graphical software development environment based upon event handling. Our goal was to investigate if the students could learn this core computer science concept while enjoying themselves in the robotics context. A visual questionnaire was developed based upon the combined Bloom and SOLO taxonomies, although it proved difficult to construct a questionnaire appropriate for young students. We found that--despite the short duration of the workshop--all but the youngest students achieved the cognitive level of Unistructural Understanding, while some students achieved higher levels of Unistructural Applying. and Multistructural Understanding and Applying.

A Two Years Informal Learning Experience Using the Thymio Robot

Technology is playing an increasing role in our society. Therefore it becomes important to educate the general public, and young generations in particular, about the most common technologies. In this context, robots are excellent education tools, for many reasons: (i) robots are fascinating and attract the attention of all population classes, (ii) because they move and react to their environment, robots are perceived as close to living beings, which make people attracted and attached to them, (iii) robots are multidisciplinary systems and can illustrate technological principles in electronics, mechanics, computer and communication sciences, and (iv) robots have many applications fields: medical, industrial, agricultural, safety ... While several robots exist on the market and are used for education, entertainment or both, none fits with the dream educational tool: promoting creativity and learning, entertaining, cheap and powerful. We addressed this goal by developing the Thymio robot and distributing it during workshops over two years. This paper describes the design principles of the robot, the educational context, and the analysis made with 65 parents after two years of use.We conclude the paper by outlining the specifications of a new form of educational robot.

A programming workshop using the robot “Thymio II”: The effect on the understanding by children

Robots are both fascinating objects for the general public and devices whose conception, understanding and programming involve many fields. This unique combination makes them an ideal tool for introducing science and technology to children. This paper presents the outcome of a programming workshop held on the occasion of the 2011 EPFL Robotics Festival. This workshop introduced programming using the robot “Thymio II”. The participants enjoyed this workshop very much, and their attitudes suggest that the public is attracted to such events out of interest rather than pure fun or educational concerns. Children appreciated the supervision, characterized by a high staff-per-child ratio of 1/3. We also show that in an hour of tutorial, children were able to acquire concepts such as the sensor or the loading of a program on the robot because they practised these enough. More theoretical and less practised concepts, such as the sensory-motor loop or the programming details, were not well understood. These findings now enable us to create better edutainment material.

Bringing Robotics to Formal Education: The Thymio Open-Source Hardware Robot

Mobile robots are valuable tools for education because of both the enthusiasm they raise and the multidisciplinary nature of robotics technology. Mobile robots give access to a wide range of fields, such as complex mechanics, sensors, wireless transmission, mathematics, and computer science. However, despite their potential as educational tools, robots are still not as widespread in schools as they could be. In this article, we identify five key reasons: lack of diversity, high cost, noninclusive design, lack of educational material, and lack of stability over time. Then, we describe our answers to these problems, as we implemented them in the Thymio project: a mature mass-produced open-hardware robot, at a low price, with a multiage and gender-neutral feature set, and with a design promoting creativity, facilitating learning, and providing a wide range of interaction possibilities from built-in behaviors to text programming, passing through different visual programming environments. We highlight some neglected key issues that differentiate open-source hardware from open-source software, for instance the legal uncertainty of designing open hardware using professional computer-aided design (CAD) tools and the difficulty to distribute the development. Our solution to these being to increase the awareness of CAD editors to open-source hardware and to provide a two-layer development model for hardware.

A Sociological Contribution to Understanding the Use of Robots in Schools: The Thymio Robot

The Thymio II robot was designed to be used by teachers in their classrooms for a wide range of activities and at all levels of the curriculum, from very young children to the end of high school. Although the educationally oriented design of this innovative robot was successful and made it possible to distribute more than 800 Thymio robots in schools with a large majority in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, it was not sufficient to significantly raise the number of teachers using robot technology in their teaching after three years of commercialization. After an introduction and a first section on the design of this educational robot, this paper presents some results of a sociological analysis of the benefits and blockages identified by teachers in using robots, or not, with their pupils.

Upgrade Your Robot Competition, Make a Festival! [Competitions]

Keywords: [mobots] ; educational robotics ; robots competitions ; NCCR Robotics Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-188462doi:10.1109/MRA.2013.2272203 Record created on 2013-09-12, modified on 2017-05-12

Pedagogical Uses of Thymio II: How Do Teachers Perceive Educational Robots in Formal Education?

Robots have generated interest for use in schools since Seymour Paperts work; however, when his Logo turtles were introduced in the 1980s, they proved to be unreliable, expensive, and limited [1]. Since then, we have seen various affordable, reliable, and polyvalent platforms such as LEGO Mindstorms [1] or the Bee-Bot [2]. Robotics has become more appealing, and it is an established fact that educational robots can improve children?s motivation [3], [4]. Robotics also embodies a wide range of disciplines that allow its use in a broad educational area and in interdisciplinary studies. Its use in compulsory schools can bring technology to a larger audience that includes both genders.

Involving and training public school teachers in using robotics for education

The introduction of technology in the public school teaching process could help increasing the weak motivation we can observe toward engineering studies. To achieve this goal, one main obstacle is motivating public school teachers to use technological tools in their teaching activity. In this paper we present how to use a large public robotic festival to introduce such educational tools to teachers. A survey made among the teachers helps in understanding their expectations in this particular context and the potential impact of this action, giving hints on how to run this type of activity.

Analysis of impact of an annual robotics festival

For four years a robotics festival has taken place at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. As the number of visitors has rapidly grown from a few thousands to a dozen thousands, it gives an opportunity to investigate who is attending this event and which impact can be obtained in terms of education and motivation toward understanding science and technology. In the 2011 edition of the festival, a large survey was carried out, collecting data from 3423 visitors. The analysis of the collected data gives an idea about the profile of the people attending the event and the key factors impacting the acceptance of science and technology. Findings show that people of all ages and especially children and families have been attracted. More men than women attended the festival and visitors tended to have completed higher education. Overall, people appreciated that the event gave them the opportunity to discover new things about robotics and some teenagers got encouraged to learn more about it. We conclude by presenting our lessons learned and make suggestions to help others with organizing public robotic events.