Scalability of the Size of Patterns Drawn Using Tactile Hand Guidance

Haptic feedback for handwriting training has been extensively studied, but with primary focus on kinematic feedback. We provide vibrotactile feedback through a wrist worn sleeve to guide the user to recreate unknown patterns and study the impact of vibrational duration (1, 2, 3 seconds) on pattern scaling. User traces a line at 90° angles, while attempting to maintain a constant speed, in the direction of the motor activated till a different motor activation is perceived. Shape and size are two features of good letter formation. Study performed on three subjects showed the ability to utilize four vibrotactile motors to guide the hand towards correct shape formation with high accuracy (\u3e 95%). The overall size of the letter was observed to scale linearly with the vibrational duration. Implications for utilizing the vibrational feedback for handwriting correction are discussed

Redesigning the user interface of handwriting recognition system for preschool children

Nowadays there are handwriting recognition systems that can be occupied to assist children learning how to write properly. However, one of the major barriers that hinders them using the system is its complex user interface where the designed is based on adult preferences. Therefore in this paper, we present the guideline to redesign the user interfaces via our experience developing a handwriting recognition system for pre-school children named Handwriting-based Learning Number (HLN). The redesign process has followed eight guidelines and rules as presented by Schniederman. The user interface satisfaction evaluation result done using Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction (QUIS) is very convincing where the users are almost satisfied with the redesign process that we did to the user interface. Hence we found that the guidelines are very useful and developers are all welcome to follow it if they intend to do similar system like us

Windfield: Learning Wind Meteorology with Handheld Haptic Robots

This article presents a learning activity and its user study involving the Cellulo platform, a novel versatile robotic tool designed for education. In order to show the potential of Cellulo in the classroom as part of standard curricular activities, we designed a learning activity called Windfield that aims to teach the atmospheric formation mechanism of wind to early middle school children. The activity involves a didactic sequence, introducing the Cellulo robots as hot air balloons and enabling children to feel the wind force through haptic feedback. We present a user study, designed in the form of a real hour-long lesson, conducted with 24 children in 8 groups who had no prior knowledge in the subject. Collaborative metrics within groups and individual performances about the learning of key concepts were measured with only the hardware and software integrated in the platform in a completely automated manner. The results show that almost all participants showed learning of symmetric aspects of wind formation while about half showed learning of asymmetric vectorial aspects that are more complex

Aprendizagem interactiva da escrita

Tese de mestrado, Informática, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2010O ensino e a aprendizagem da escrita gráfica são processos complementares longos e evolutivos que, tradicionalmente, envolvem profundamente tanto professores quanto crianças. Da parte do professor, requer-se que este transmita e exemplifique as formas correctas de executar os movimentos cinestésicos da caligrafia. Dos alunos espera-se a execução continuada dos exercícios, para aperfeiçoamento das suas capacidades de coordenação motora. É frequente, durante este processo de ensino/aprendizagem, o professor dirigir fisicamente o aluno, exemplificando a sequência de movimentos correcta. Por outro lado, o aluno necessita que o professor lhe indique se o seu aproveitamento nessas tarefas é positivo, ou negativo. Neste último caso, o professor terá de efectuar um acompanhamento mais próximo para auxiliar a criança a ultrapassar as limitações demonstradas. Havendo uma tão grande dependência entre estes dois intervenientes, procurou-se desenvolver uma solução capaz de fornecer a autonomização necessária a ambos, que se reflecte na redução significativa dos tempos das tarefas de acompanhamento prolongado individual de cada aluno, libertando o professor para que este possa desenvolver um trabalho mais especializado junto dos que revelem maiores dificuldades na aprendizagem da escrita caligráfica. Neste sentido, desenvolveu-se uma plataforma, baseada em dispositivos tácteis – tablet PC, que suportou a construção de duas ferramentas protótipo: uma direccionada para assistir os professores nas tarefas de definição de exercícios e visualização das suas execuções pelos alunos, e outra para fornecer o suporte necessário às crianças para execução dos exercícios com capacidades de retorno visual para ajuda e orientação em tempo real, e com um mecanismo de classificação do gesto efectuado. Estas ferramentas de trabalho visam autonomizar professor e alunos e optimizar a produtividade de ambos. As duas ferramentas foram submetidas a uma avaliação inicial, cujos resultados parecem confirmar as premissas que fundamentaram este trabalho.Teaching and learning how to write are two complimentary, time consuming and evolving processes, that traditionally require deep commitment from both teacher and pupils. A teacher is required to show how to correctly execute calligraphic movements. Pupils are expected to perform the required movement repetitions, necessary to perfect their motor coordination skills. During this process, it is common for the teacher to physically orient the pupil, demonstrating how to perform the correct movements’ sequence. The pupil, on the other hand, will require feedback from the teacher, in order to perceive if he is doing his tasks correctly or not. If the pupil exhibits difficulties, the teacher is required to provide closer assistance in order to help him overcome those problems. Taking into account this strong reliance on each other that both involved parties on the learning how to write process exhibit, this work strives to achieve a solution that can endow them with some required autonomy. Such solution would result in less average time required to accompany each individual pupil, allowing the teacher to concentrate on those pupils that show greatest difficulties. To this end, a tablet PC based platform was designed, supporting the development of two prototype tools. One tool helps teachers define calligraphy exercises and provides means for the visualization of the resolutions submitted by the pupils. The other tool offers pupils the features required to perform the exercises. This tool incorporates real time guidance and feedback mechanisms, as well as a grading algorithm. Both tools were subjected to an initial assessment. Results so far support the hypotheses that such tools can contribute to an increased autonomy and productivity of teachers and pupils

Haptics Rendering and Applications

There has been significant progress in haptic technologies but the incorporation of haptics into virtual environments is still in its infancy. A wide range of the new society's human activities including communication, education, art, entertainment, commerce and science would forever change if we learned how to capture, manipulate and reproduce haptic sensory stimuli that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. For the field to move forward, many commercial and technological barriers need to be overcome. By rendering how objects feel through haptic technology, we communicate information that might reflect a desire to speak a physically- based language that has never been explored before. Due to constant improvement in haptics technology and increasing levels of research into and development of haptics-related algorithms, protocols and devices, there is a belief that haptics technology has a promising future

Cellulo: Tangible Haptic Swarm Robots for Learning

Robots are steadily becoming one of the significant 21st century learning technologies that aim to improve education within both formal and informal environments. Such robots, called Robots for Learning, have so far been utilized as constructionist tools or social agents that aided learning from distinct perspectives. This thesis presents a novel approach to Robots for Learning that aims to explore new added values by means of investigating uses for robots in educational scenarios beyond those that are commonly tackled: We develop a platform from scratch to be "as versatile as pen and paper", namely as composed of easy to use objects that feel like they belong in the learning ecosystem while being seamlessly usable across many activities that help teach a variety of subjects. Following this analogy, we design our platform as many low-cost, palm-sized tangible robots that operate on printed paper sheets, controlled by readily available mobile computers such as smartphones or tablets. From the learners' perspective, our robots are thus physical and manipulable points of hands-on interaction with learning activities where they play the role of both abstract and concrete objects that are otherwise not easily represented. We realize our novel platform in four incremental phases, each of which consists of a development stage and multiple subsequent validation stages. First, we develop accurately positioned tangibles, characterize their localization performance and test the learners' interaction with our tangibles in a playful activity. Second, we integrate mobility into our tangibles and make them full-blown robots, characterize their locomotion performance and test the emerging notion of moving vs. being moved in a learning activity. Third, we enable haptic feedback capability on our robots, measure their range of usability and test them within a complete lesson that highlights this newly developed affordance. Fourth, we develop the means of building swarms with our haptic-enabled tangible robots and test the final form of our platform in a lesson co-designed with a teacher. Our effort thus contains the participation of more than 370 child learners over the span of these phases, which leads to the initial insights into this novel Robots for Learning avenue. Besides its main contributions to education, this thesis further contributes to a range of research fields related to our technological developments, such as positioning systems, robotic mechanism design, haptic interfaces and swarm robotics