Sthymuli: a Static Educational Robot. Leveraging the Thymio II Platform

TL;DR

The paper addresses barriers to adopting robotics in classrooms by proposing Sthymuli, a static educational robot built on the Thymio II platform. It adopts a design-led, modular approach with 3D-printed components and a VPL2-like programming interface to keep the experience approachable for teachers and students. Two prototypes (vibration plate and spinal arm modules) demonstrate the feasibility of static, aesthetically-driven interactions and are evaluated through limited classroom testing. The work contributes a viable benchmark against traditional wheeled robots and outlines future work to broaden deployment and explore the impact of robot aesthetics on learning outcomes.

Abstract

The use of robots in education represents a challenge for teachers and a fixed vision of what robots can do for students. This paper presents the development of Sthymuli, a static educational robot designed to explore new classroom interactions between robots, students and teachers. We propose the use of the Thymio II educational platform as a base, ensuring a robust benchmark for a fair comparison of the commonly available wheeled robots and our exploratory approach with Sthymuli. This paper outlines the constraints and requirements for developing such a robot, the current state of development and future work.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Testing with kids the interactivity of the first prototype.
• Figure 2: Second prototype during second testing session.
• Figure 3: Final iteration of Sthymuli's VPL3 interface.