About
Pomelo is an educational robot that is suitable for primary school classrooms. Its aim is to teach coding to younger kids in a simple way.
Pomelo can be programmed to move in desired patterns and directions through physical code-blocks. Teachers can create and assign puzzles or mazes to the students using the aforementioned code blocks. This would, in turn, make them interested in STEM fields.
Learning is best done through playing. Thus, the rudiments for programming can be thought in its best manner through physical toys such as Pomelo. We believe that learning to think like a programmer is not only beneficial to the future programmer but it is beneficial for everyone since skills like problem-solving and analytical thinking are essential for everybody.
Features
Design
To make the interaction between Pomelo and the students more natural, Pomelo has an appearance that children would be comfortable playing with. To accomplish this, we showed different designs to elementary school students and a majority of students said that they preferred to play with the dog-like design.
Physical Code-Blocks
Pomelo is programmable through the pysical code blocks that are similar to "ABC" block in visual. The kids can put the block together and create a program! To create these aforementioned code blocks we placed an ArUco marker on the top left corner of all sides of the blocks. The camera in the front of the robot reads these markers from top to bottom and performs the moves accordingly.
Emotions
We wanted to add emotions to Pomelo to make the interaction less mechanical and more organic. To do this we added eyes on the screen at the front of the robot. Now, using the screen Pomelo can be sad or happy depending on the situation.
Tech Specifications
We used Raspberry Pi 3 as our main processor and the Pololu DRV8835 motor driver to control our two back Micro DC Motor wheels. Pomelo has a rear-wheel drive and a caster wheel in front, providing the movement needed for completing the code-block tasks. In order to process the code-block images, we installed a RasPi Camera and used the OpenCV ArUco library. We also used XPT2046, a 4.3’’ LCD screen, to display Pomelo’s eyes.
Pictures
Papers & Presantations
Pycon Uk
This is our presantation at the Pycon UK Conference about our project.
HRI 2019 Daegu/Korea
We were the first High School group accepted to the Student Design competition of the Human Robot Interaction conference. At the conference we earned the "Delegates Choice Award" for the Student Design category. Our paper was Published on both The ACM Digital Libary and the IEEE Digital Libary
European Product Design Awards 2019 Honorable Mention
Pomelos' design was awarded an Honorable Mention under the education section for the 2019 European Product Design Awards .
Fablearn Asia
We participated in FabLearn Asia’20 Students Showcase and Demo with one of our prototypes. We presented our project to the participants in our booth. We also got the chance to test our robot with the kids at the conference.
Constructivism 2020
Our Project was accepted to the Constructivsm 2020 conference. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic this year the conference was cancelled, however, the proceedings were still published on the Trinty College digital libary.
Connected Learning Summit 2021
The Connected Learning Summit 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic and therefore the conference was postponed to 2021. Our paper “Pomelo, A Collaborative Education Technology Interaction Robot” was accepted to conference in the Showcase category. (updates will be posted)
Meet The Team
Ece Tabag
Can Aydin
Andy Kocak
Rana Taki
Liora Nasi
Yoel Nasi
Batuhan Bayraktar
Can Gürkan
Sedat Yalçın
Contact
hisarcs@gmail.com
Instagram: @hisarcs
Twitter: @hisarcs