Co-Design and implementation of an open-source 3D printed robot

During the 2017-18 academic year we carried out a series of coding activities, lasting about 3 months, in a third of the Giulia Falletti primary school in Barolo in Turin (Gena et a., 2020). These activities aimed to teach students not only the basics of programming, but also to introduce a new language and a new way of thinking and solving problems: computational thinking. The class consisted of 25 pupils: 14 males and 11 females, which we then operationally divided into two working groups (13 + 12) to make coding lessons more manageable and provide better childcare. The lessons lasted one hour and were conducted, in the presence of one of the teachers, by a computer teacher assisted by a student / facilitator. At the end of the three months of this positive experience, we realized that having an educational robot that can perform the same kind of actions that virtual robots do, like those of code.org, is very useful for children, especially to help them to solve orientation problems. Therefore, since no commercial robot had the characteristics we wanted, we decided to create an educational robot from scratch, equipped with social, interactive and emotional skills, able to involve children and establish an emotional bond with them in order to increase their learning and involvement. We decided from the beginning to design the robot as an open source project, made at a low cost, proposing a kit that can be easily reproduced and improved by anyone who wishes.

Educational robotics for children and their teachers

This paper describes a Google Educator funded project devoted to the training of teachers (primary and secondary school) through an e-learning platform that will introduce them to educational robotics using Wolly, a social, educational and affective robot.