Objective achieved for CoderBot, the robot for playing thinking
The campaign to raise funds has exceeded the threshold of 5,000 euros established at launch: thanks to the contributions of over 60 lenders, including Sorgenia, more than 7.000 Euro have in fact been raised. With the funding obtained, by the end of the year, the robot designed for students will have new software that will allow users with very different skill levels to use it, ranging from the use of the joystick to actual coding.
CoderBot is an educational robot for primary and secondary schools, the result of a project that combines robotics, education and innovation. It has been “adopted” by the University of Milano-Bicocca which, with this campaign, wants to improve the aspects related to programming and control software in order to offer schools, teachers, children and parents the most suitable tool for learning and having fun at the same time, stimulating reasoning and problem solving skills. The development of the software will make it possible to create a new highly customizable version of the CoderBot.
The crowdfunding took place from February 19th to April 26th on the DeRev platform and backers were provided with different types of rewards including the CoderBot itself and training workshops to learn how to program it. Among the rewards designed for schools there were also fleets of four to ten CoderBots that can be used for interactive teaching with large groups of students. And the likeable robot proved to be the most coveted reward: in fact, a total of 29 specimens will be produced and distributed.
The innovative scope of the project and the possibility of bringing technology to schools convinced Sorgenia to participate in the fundraising campaign: the ten CoderBots requested, which are associated with 16 hours of training for teachers, will be destined for two schools in Italy.
The robot is used as part of the research and training activities carried out by the RobotiCCS Lab, the Robotics Laboratory for Cognitive and Social Sciences of the “Riccardo Massa” Department of Human Sciences for Education, and by the Test and Analysis Laboratory of the Software of the Department of Computer Science, Systems and Communication of the University of Milano-Bicocca. The group that will develop the new CoderBot is made up of Edoardo Datteri, researcher in Philosophy of Science, Leonardo Mariani, full professor of Information Processing Systems, and Roberto Previtera, IT project manager and robotics expert.
The goal is to create an easy-to-use educational robot that can be customized according to the age of the students and the training needs of the teacher. CoderBot is an effective tool to stimulate both the acquisition of specific scientific-technological skills, and the development of the so-called transversal skills related to reasoning and problem solving: programming in fact means not only applying technical skills and knowledge, but also and above all thinking, formulate hypotheses and evaluate them through experiments, to have fun at the same time interacting with the robot’s camera, distance sensors, microphone and speaker, which can move by making sounds and words. The CoderBot campaign is the first step in a larger crowdfunding project that the University of Milano-Bicocca is implementing to make new tools available to its community to support ideas, innovation, entrepreneurial ability and research.
«We thank all those who contributed to the crowdfunding campaign - said Edoardo Datteri, Leonardo Mariani and Roberto Previtera - because thanks to their participation the initiative ended in success, achieving a result that goes beyond the pre-established objective. In fact, with the funds raised, we will make the CoderBot an even more functional and flexible robot: the programming interface will be improved and made adaptable according to the characteristics of the users and the teacher’s objectives. We believe that CoderBot can become a useful educational tool at the service of the community and we are very happy that so many people have decided to believe in our project».
Posted on 02/05/2018 by CoderBot news