Robot swarms as an educational tool: The Thymio’s way

Abstract

Robotics provides useful tools for educational purposes, allowing to engage students in learning within disparate domains, from computer science and artificial intelligence-traditionally the main domains for educational robotics-to general education, human and social sciences and arts. Robots can be used with different purposes, from being simple tools to be programmed with some specific behaviour, to being peers with whom to engage in a fruitful interaction for a collaborative learning purpose. In this sense, they can also foster learning of transversal skills such as communication and cooperation. In this article, we propose robot swarms as a novel educational tool to target exactly those transversal skills that are difficult to account otherwise. The usage of multiple robots interacting to solve a common problem can support the learning of concepts related to cooperation and collective actions and can make accessible notions about complex systems that are common in physical, biological, economic and social sciences. Additionally, the possibility to interact and participate in the collective behaviour displayed by the robot swarm can strongly increase the comprehension and engagement with the proposed concept. Motivated by this picture, we propose a roadmap for the utilization of swarm robotics for educational purposes, which is hinged on the Thymio robot, a simple but powerful educational robot that presents all the features required for swarm robotics experimentation. We propose two case studies and we substantiate the proposal with preliminary results from a demonstration of robot swarms performed during a recent robotics festival.

What Can Robots Teach Us About The COVID-19 Pandemic? Interactive Demonstrations of Epidemiological Models Using a Swarm of Brushbots

“…In [11], the authors highlight the importance of good design practices in order to ensure the adoption of robots by teachers and enable creativity in students. Different modalities of interactions between users and the robots have been envisioned, including the use of haptic feedback via robots [12], using robotic interfaces to drive up social engagement [13], and leveraging robot swarms as we do in this paper [14]. We refer the reader to the following surveys [15], [16] for an overview of the various robots which have been used in educational settings and their trade-offs.…”

Mapping K-12 Computer Science Teacher’s Interest, Self-Confidence, and Knowledge about the Use of Educational Robotics to Teach

“…As Vitanza et al suggest [26] "the usage of multiple robots interacting to solve a common problem can support the learning of concepts related to cooperation and collective actions and can make accessible notions about complex systems that are common in physical, biological, economic and social sciences" (p. 1), such as exploring swarm robotics for educational purposes. Likewise, Chevalier et al in their study [27] conclude that educational robotics has broad applicability, especially in the development of transversal skills.…”

A Multiple Pheromone Communication System for Swarm Intelligence

“…This has contributed to the gradual development of swarm robotics from simulation to realistic applications [14], [15]. In the context of the rapid advancement of research into swarm intelligence with the use of physical robots, swarm robotics research is rapidly developing in the areas of aggregation [16], foraging [17], navigation [18], deployment [19], object transportation [20], and education [21], [22]. In the social in sect world, such collective behaviors, particularly aggregation and foraging, are dependent on pheromone biology [23].…”