AT SCHOOL WITH ROBOTS: A NEW GENERATION OF INTERCONNECTED MEDIATORS AND AUGMENTED REALITY TO LEARN MORE EASILY TO WRITE AND PLAY

The school of the future will have students who learn to write or play a musical instrument helped by robots connected to each other. This is a possible scenario thanks to the Conbots project coordinated by the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome. The project officially begins with the kick-off meeting scheduled for February 12 and 13.
Conbots means “CONnected through roBOTS” and it’s the first project that aims to increase physical interaction between two humans through the use of robots. Funded with almost five million euros from the European framework program "Horizon 2020", the project will last 3 1/2 years. The BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and IUVO Company participate with the research team led by Nicola Vitiello and Simona Crea. The other partners are Imperial College London, Gand University, IBM and ARVRtech.
Conbots is aimed at those who need to learn new motor skills; the project will design in educational scenarios a new class of connected robots for a new collaborative perspective between man and machine.

"The goal of the project – explains Domenico Formica, Conbots’ coordinator (Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome) – is to allow students to learn new complex motor tasks, such as writing or playing a musical instrument. This will be possible thanks to a new generation of robots that can physically connect people with each other."

Recent neuroscientific studies suggest that people learn a new motor task more quickly by working in pairs. Conbots will make this new mode of collaboration usable to provide the user with better feedback than traditional teaching methods. This result is also possible thanks to augmented reality tools and real "educational video games" developed within Conbots.