Hand-held educational robots for learning STEM concepts

Inspired by needs for haptic support of large motions on a surface in applications like embodied conceptual learning, commercial design, and 2D virtual/augmented reality, we at SPIN lab at the University of British Columbia made a ballpoint drive system called Magic Pen [1]. This novel approach circumvents conventional constraints by imposing a new one: motion restricted to rolling on an arbitrary two dimensional surface, and grounding forces generated through friction.
During this visit at EPFL, I propose to work with two existing research projects at CHILI lab; CoWriter and Cellulo. The Magic Pen and these NCCR Robotics projects could mutually benefit from each other and make new contributions to Educational Robotics.
The CoWriter [2,3] project at the CHILI Lab of EPFL, uses a learning by teaching paradigm to encourage children to practice their handwriting by teaching a robot. Using a graphical tablet to acquire handwriting data, a RF based algorithm is now able to diagnose dysgraphia and to characterise precisely handwriting difficulties [4]. The last results of the project showed in particular that the pen pressure, tilt and dynamic features of handwriting were very discriminative for dysgraphia. TBC

Faculty Supervisor:

Karon MacLean

Student:

Partner:

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Education

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: