Programme

Teachers are the major determinant of quality in education. However pedagogy is heavily influenced and, in many cases, restricted by curriculum and assessment pressures. Although there are outstanding teachers and schools, the evidence suggests that many students do not identify with science from a relatively early age and, perhaps as a consequence, develop negative attitudes towardsscience in school. These feelings appear to be even more prevalent among girls. What, if anything, can be done about the situation? Drawing on research funded by the European Commission and by the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council, this talk will focus on three key issues: image, interest and identity. As well as presenting empirical data from a range of countries, some case studies of effective and innovative practice in schools and in other science-rich institutions will be discussed.

Short overlook about past, present and future of robots. Robots as most sophisticated machines develop by man. Two basic behaviors of biological systems: adaptation as dominating behavior type in the world of the plants and sensing-planning-acting as dominating behavior type in the world of animals (and man). Robots are machines which are (partly) following the behavior of animals, for that reason are robots most sophistical machines ever made by man. Abilities and efficiency of robots are given and based on the balance and harmony between mass (mechanical structure), information (control/sensors structure) and energy (actuators).

We are now facing the transformation from industry and information based society to the society based on knowledge. This transformation is one of the most fascinating transformations in the history of mankind. Chances, risks and potential possibilities are of this transformation are enormous. The role of engineers and their education will be changed in seven main directions; one of them is need for increased creativity of engineers. The space given for the development of creativity of engineers during education is due to the traditional approach and limited educational means very limited. Application of robots for the education opens possibilities of creative learning and creative research as tool for increasing of creativity of next generation of engineers.

Use of robots in the education is at very early stage, we have just some mosaic stones in the wonderful mosaic picture called robotics platform for creative learning and creative research. This platform will be created in the next years and decades by integration in different networks now still isolated fragmental activities at academia and in the industry worldwide. The main characteristics of such platform have to be:

1. Platform has to cover all needs for the creative learning from the level children (learning & playing) over pupils and students till the level of scientific research in different disciplines up to doctoral level.
2. Platform must be suitable for the learning robotics and bright range of other disciplines (from control, logistics, programming, sensorics, organization, different services and many others).
3. The robots used in this platform are in the range of small and closed structures till complex with (semi) opened structure. They have to cover wide range of adaptive and intelligent behavior, and wide range of abilities of robots, based on different sensor and integrating software.
4. Cooperation between different robots from other producers. Robot cooperation tasks have to solve larger problems of completing of tasks which cannot be solved by one robot only. For solving of this kind of problems is necessary to synchronize the work of more robots.
5. Assistance (help) tasks including robot help to people, machines or other robots to complete their work.
6. Building of complex self organizing systems for different tasks such as: assembly, production, and service. All "self-" disciplines are one of the most promising directions in the development of technology.
7. Improving of robot performances and abilities for the applications in the conditions of increased disorder and the dynamic of changes in the surrounding environment.
8. Spreading of robots in the new application fields in industry, services and education.
9. Development of robot functions and abilities in the direction to be system integrator.
10. Competitions in the creative learning and creative research based on the use of this platform. The competitions have to be organized from elementary school till the level of the universities at national and international levels.
11. Development of curricula for creative education with mobile technological robots. Development of standard exercises and research tasks.
12. Development of new pedagogical approach for creative learning and creative research based on robots and with robots. Including modern learning technologies, means and methods

International cooperation between partners from academia and industry is needed for development of new generation of technological and service mobile robots for creative education and research. In this concept has to be integrated best positive experience in the education in robotics and education with the use of robots of all partners.

Robots are at the very beginning of their development, sophistication of today's robots is comparable with the level of sophistication of cars before the First World War. No one other known machine has such enormous development potential and wide fields of applications as robots.

ID 9: Simultaneous navigation and fault detection of legged robot
Anton Vitko, Ladislav Jurišica, František Duchoň, Andrej Babinec, Martin Dekan, Dušan Kaštan, Marian Kľúčik, Michal Bachratý
Institute of Control and Industrial Informatics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
The paper describes results obtained in the development of adaptive fuzzy-neural navigation subsystem for mobile legged robot. In order to keep the motion sufficiently smooth, free of sharp turnings and transversal swings when moving between closely located obstacles, the fuzzy rules are updated on line. To this end the fuzzy rules are expressed through a layered feed-forward neural network and parameters and parameters in two steps – rough and fine updating. That is followed by the description of the learning fault diagnosis using binary neural network based on the Carpenter and Grosbergs’ adaptive resonance theory.

ID 11: Mappino - Open Source Robot for Learning about Laser Scan Matching
Albert Diosi
Slovakia
Localization and mapping is a basic building block for many mobile robots. Laser scan matching is one way of implementing such a functionality. Currently a significant commitment of time and financial resources are likely to be necessary to delve into this area of robotics. This paper aims to bring laser scan matching closer to robotics enthusiasts and students by introducing an inexpensive, open source robot programmable through the accessible Arduino programming environment. In the presented robot rotating range sensors are used instead of a laser scanner. Simple example code is available for the robot to facilitate a quicker familiarization process. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the scanning and scan matching capability of the robot.

ID 13: Robotic Team Projects at the FEI STU
Richard Balogh, Jozef Škultéty
Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
We will describe the organization of team projects at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. We would like to share and discuss our experiences with the projectbased learning. As an example, the robot J2MP, winner of the Robotchallenge contest is presented.

ID 15: Laboratory exercises with Acrob robot
Richard Balogh
Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
We will share our experiences with the laboratory work of students during the basic Robotics course at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. The course is intended for the 3rd year students of the bachelor studies. We will describe hardware used for the course and tasks solved during the semester. We describe the main problems encountered, experiences and results. Also the students opinion is evaluated.

ID 17: Robot competitions trick students into learning
Francis Wyffels, Karel Bruneel, Pieter-Jan Kindermans, Michiel D'Haene, Pierre Woestyn, Peter Bertels, Benjamin Schrauwen
Ghent University, Belgium
It has been shown in the past that robots help to bring theoretical concepts into practice, while at the same time increasing the motivation of the students. Despite these benefits, robots are hardly ever integrated in education programs and at the same time students feel that they have the competences nor the infrastructure to build a robot on their own. Therefore the workgroup electronics (WELEK) of Ghent University gives students the opportunity to build a robot by organizing workshops and competitions. Up until now, four competitions were organized in which over 200 students voluntarily participated. This paper describes our approach in the hope that it will inspire other educators to do the same thing. We also measured the effectiveness of our competitions by sending each of the participants a questionnaire. The results confirm that students acquire relevant technical competences by building a robot, learn to work as a team and are challenged to use their creativity.

ID 19: Simulating and control biped walking robot using kinematic and dynamic relations
Mohammad Kojouri Manesh, Kourosh Heydari Shirazi
Shiraz University, Iran
In this article, we intend to consider the behavior and control of a biped walking robot using kinematic and dynamic relations. At first, by using simple model of humanoid robot and essentional equations the angles, angular velocities, accelerations of motors and required torques for moving on a straight line will find out. In the second step these items for numerical example is calculated and then is constructed the main modeling and simulating the motion.

ID 21: Teaching robotics with an open curriculum based on the e-puck robot, simulations and competitions
Luc Guyot, Nicolas Heiniger, Olivier Michel, Fabien Rohrer
Cyberbotics Ltd., Switzerland
We introduce a robotics curriculum intended for all levels of learning and discuss results of related in-class experiments and competitions. The curriculum is an open document with a collaborative format, hence freely accessible and extendable. Based on the e-puck mobile robot and the Webots simulator, it addresses a dozen of topics ranging from finite state automata to particle swarm optimization. While beginners familiarize with a user-friendly graphical programming interface, most advanced readers benefit of apt exercises to tackle robotics contests.

ID 23: Teaching Robotics at the Postgraduate Level: Assessment and Feedback for On Site and Distance Learning
Jenny Carter, Stephen Matthews, Simon Coupland
De Montfort University, United Kingdom
The MSc Intelligent Systems (IS) and the MSc Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISR) programmes at De Montfort University are Masters level courses that are delivered both on-site and by distance learning. The courses have been running successfully on-site for 7 years and are now in the fourth year with a distance learning mode. Delivering material at a distance, especially where there is technical and practical content, always presents a challenge but the need to deliver a robotics module increased the challenges we faced significantly. There are two robotics modules though the second one is only available to those on MSc ISR. We have chosen to make the first robotics module, Mobile Robots, the focus of this paper because it was the first that had to be delivered and it is delivered to students on both programmes. This paper describes the assessment of students’ work and the subsequent feedback given to students within the course as a whole and more specifically, the Mobile Robots module. The approaches maximise the use of electronic methods and as such there is a specific focus on those students that are studying in distance learning mode. We believe it serves as a model for others attempting to assess students studying robotics courses at a distance.

ID 25: A Low-Cost Real-Time Mobile Robot Platform (ArEduBot) to support Project-Based Learning in Robotics & Mechatronics
Ilya Gartseev, Leng-Feng Lee, Venkat Krovi
Moscow State Technical University of Radioengineering, Electronics, and Automation, Russian Federation
We discuss aspects of development of a low-cost real-time mobile-robot platform – ArEduBot - for educational experiments. Our framework leverages ease-of- programming in block-diagrammatic form within the MATLAB/Simulink environment, together with several special-blocks developed within our Arduino-Simulink Toolbox . The executable, compiled using the Real-Time-Workshop toolchain, can be downloaded for standalone real-time execution on an Arduino controller board interfaced to an iRobot Create mobile base. Our goal is to deploy this framework in introductory robotics and mechatronics classes, to complement the lecture and to support project-based learning. From this perspective, we compare the ease-of-use of multiple deployment architectures, describe our block-implementation within the Arduino Simulink Toolbox, and present several example experiments created using this framework.

ID 27: Promoting scientific thinking with robots
Juan Pablo, Dorit Assaf, Emanuel Benker
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zürich, Switzerland
This article describes an exemplary robot exercise which was conducted in a class for mechatronics students. The goal of this exercise was to engage students in scientific thinking and reasoning, activities which do not always play an important role in their curriculum. The robotic platform presented here is simple in its construction and is customizable to the needs of the teacher. Therefore, it can be used for exercises in many different fields of science, not necessarily related to robotics. Here we present a situation where the robot is used like an alien creature from which we want to understand its behavior, resembling an ethological, or maybe neuroethological, research activity. The activity is suited for a wide range of courses, from general introduction to science, to hardware oriented lectures.

ID 31: Electronic Platform for Small Robots in Education
Raimund Edlinger, Michael Zauner, Walter Rokitansky
FH OÖ Forschungs & Entwicklungs GmbH, Austria
Robotics is a scientific discipline which needs a high level knowledge in the fields of computer science, as well as electrical and mechanical engineering and high-performance modular control systems. This paper reports the first results of a project that uses a previously developed very small Electronic Platform (Miniboard) for small and simple autonomous mobile robots. This board is used in the education program with bachelor students in their third and fourth semester. It should help them to build robots, like Sumos or Line Followers, so they can get first experiences in robotic. We demonstrate the robustness of this approach in controlling indoor mobile robots for the RobotChallenge in Vienna.

ID 33: Road Detection Using Similarity Search
Roman Stoklasa, Petr Matula
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
This paper concerns vision-based navigation of autonomous robots. We propose a new approach for road detection based on similarity database searches. Images from the camera are divided into regular samples and for each sample the most visually similar images are retrieved from the database. The similarity between the samples and the image database is measured in a metric space using three descriptors: edge histogram, color structure and color layout, resulting in a classification of each sample into two classes: road and non-road with a confidence measure. The performance of our approach has been evaluated with respect to a manually defined ground-truth. The approach has been successfully applied to four videos consisting of more than 1180 frames. It turned out that our approach offers very precise classification results.

ID 35: Use of an Infocenter to Improve the Management and Understanding of Project-Based Learning Robotics
Kathia Pittí, Belén Curto, Joaquín García, Vidal Moreno, Román Ontiyuelo
University of Salamanca,Panama
Robotics allows the implementation of a variety of interesting experiments in conjunction with the methodology of Project-Based Learning (PBL). It has the potential to become an ideal tool in the teaching of a wide variety of scientific and technological disciplines. Furthermore, the student is brought closer to the reality of the professional world through the completion of a project. However, when applying this methodology in an extra-curricular robotics workshop, it is important to bear in mind the following question: how can we ensure that the participants are fully aware of the stages involved in a project and have a realistic experience of project-management? In this article the use of a tool inspired by the world of business will be explained. We have decided to call it an ‘infocenter’. It is a strategy designed to enhance the effective management of the project and also the feeling of forming part of a team which is central to carrying out a project. To allow an evaluation of its usefulness the experimental results from the implementation of this strategy during the NXT Baby Sumo workshop are presented. Through the evaluation of the participants and the instructor, it is shown how the infocenter can be adjusted to suit this purpose.

ID 37: System of Indicators and Methodology of Evaluation for the Robotics in Classroom
Jonathan Ortiz, Raime Bustos, Antonio Rios
Mexico
Robotics in the classroom is a multi discipline that has taken a global momentum because teaching science and technology creates a very large range of benefits. However, the benefit has not been clearly measured and defined because there is not a system of indicators and a standardized evaluation methodology for them. The present study defines a measurement Model of Robotics in the Classroom, validated by a methodology of experts, and a system of indicators.

ID 39: Comparison model of autonomous robot tracking system using TI DSP processor with ARM
Nethaji Duvarakanathan, Venkata Ratnam
Velammal Engineering College, India
In this paper, we review the process of comparison for the autonomous robotic system using LPC2378 againt LPC2148, along with TI DSP processor. The tracking system has been aided by CamShift Algorithm, which extends a default implementation to allow tracking in feature spaces. Tracking and navigation algorithms would be implemented using the TI DM6437 EVM board and robotic system. The robot's performance would be demonstrating that a visual tracking and navigation can be efficiently and robustly implemented, and TI DSP is suitable for running both algorithms simultaneously due to its low power consumption and high-speed performance. This paper also clarifies a modified version of CAMSHIFT algorithm which include H,S,V component of HSV model, which get incorporates with DVM 6437 processor, which allow it to track people successfully and very efficiently. The resultant data from davinci (slave) would be sent to the robotic system (master) via serial COM port for controlling the Robot action. The experimental results would prove the consistency of the proposed system.

ID 41: Teaching BOTBALL and researching DISBOTICS
Koppensteiner Gottfried, Munir Merdan, David P. Miller
Vienna University of Technology, Austria
The enrollment in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) is not keeping pace with the need, especially in the robotics sector. The university level is often too late for someone to start their engineering education and therefore universities must recruit students well before they are about to start university study. This paper shows how to bridge the gap between research and high school education using BOTBALL combined with an actual research topic: The disassembly of goods with autonomous mobile robots. This paper is based on an extensive cooperative experience between the Vienna University of Technology and the Vienna Institute of Technology (TGM) and a successful first BOTBALL Season with the students of the TGM. It shows the possibilities of BOTBALL, the influence of other courses and a way to start with robotic beginners and end with research experts by the example of the DISBOTICS Project.

ID 43: The minor specialization Robotics at FEE CTU in Prague
Miroslav Kulich, Libor Přeučil, Karel Košnar, Tomáš Krajník, Jan Chudoba
FEE, CTU in Prague, Czech Republic
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE), Czech Technical University in Prague offers seven master degree study programs. Although classical setup of study plans does perform well, recently founded study branches of the ``Open Informatics'' program employ a novel approach, that provides new, individually configurable study plans. These study plans offer education which is not strictly binded to already existing programs but truly diverse across existing study branches. This allows more efficient tailoring of individual needs and interests of students. The programs bring up an opportunity to select and add a minor specialization to an existing major study branch. Flexibility of this setup combines the teaching process itself with access to the state-of-the-art knowledge in the field of latest research results in the domain. The following paper presents core concepts and ideas of the minor entitled Robotics, which has launched in 2010 and guides students from fundamental concepts of information processing in robotics and basic robot control to latest approaches to robot autonomy, cognition, collective robotics and intelligent mobile robotics.

ID 45: Robotic Education at Medical University Innsbruck
Michael Sieb
Medical University Innsbruck, Austria
Robotics gets more and more impact in live sciences, but it is still not part of the medical curriculum at medical universities. In surgery, robots work like complex instruments expanding the spectrum of the surgeon. To give our students the chance to learn about the ability and limits we run a “Hands on Robotic Workshop” at medical university Innsbruck. Our aim was not to teach surgical procedures, it was about constructing robots. As far as we know this was the first workshop on a medical university. Lego Mindstorms NXT was selected as platform for easy construction and programming. This paper presents the different missions and results of a feedback questionnaire.

ID 49: Learning Lab - Programming Interaction with Humanoid Robots for Pupils
Alicia Weirich, Carola Haumann, Jochen Steil, Susanne Schüler
Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics, Bielefeld University, Germany
At Bielefeld University pupils of German secondary schools get the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art robots and programming tools in the teutolab-robotik. They get in touch with the  research field of robot learning in the workshop  'Learning Lab'  by working with the humanoid robot Nao in an out-of-school and hands-on one-afternoon course. Its goal is to excite pupils for robotics, to enhance their knowledge and to provide teachers with new stimuli for their school teaching. This is challenging because teaching hands-on experiences in robotics exceeds and expands the standard school curricula, which is a main goal of teutolab-robotik.

ID 51: Kindergarten Children Programming Robots: A First Attempt
Kerstin Stoeckelmayr, Michael Tesar, Alexander Hofmann
FH Technikum Wien, Institut für Informatik, Austria
Using robots to teach programming is a method to enthuse young people about computer sciences. They are applied by colleges as well as by schools. To rouse young people´s enthusiasm for technology, the [[anonymus Department]] – [[Anonymous University]] offers robotic classes at a kindergarten for pre-school children (aged five to six years). Simultaneously, they are given an understanding of scientists´ profession. All activities with the robots are documented by the children themselves, processed and reflected about in complementing talks. To cater to all learning types, a high value is put on using different methods of teaching and the children work actively in workshops. Thus, a strong sense of identification with the project can be ensured in both children and lecturers. The collaterally conducted case study demonstrates the gained findings and enables multipliers to apply this concept adapted to their own needs. Complementing this case-study we recommend using this procedure in kindergartens with a high number of children with migratory background. Also, we point out the limitations of constructivist educational concepts in kindergartens.

ID 55: Mixed-Reality Robotics – A Coherent Teaching Framework
Reinhard Gerndt Gerndt, Jens Luessem
Ostfalia Hochschule, Germany
Robotics evolved as a central issue in teaching for scientific and engineering disciplines. Robotics inherently encompasses a spectrum of sciences and technologies and qualification levels. However, most current teaching approaches, related to robotics, concentrate on individual aspects or small student groups. In this paper we present the mixed-reality robotics educational approach. With our mixed-reality robotics teaching system we reached a true interdisciplinary setup, addressing different qualification levels. The system allows for aspects like peer education, learning-by-teaching, problem-based learning and competition-based (self-) assessment. It consists of the mixed-reality robotics platform and a teaching concept. The overall approach has been used in teaching robotics at secondary school, undergraduate and graduate level. Student and instructor feedback is very positive.

ID 57: Design-Build-Test: A Project Course for Engineering Students - Implementation of Assistive Functions on a Power Wheelchair
Sven Rönnbäck, Staffan Schedin
Umeå University, Sweden
Design-Build-Test experience, which is one of the CDIO standards, is a central when learning the process of developing new products and systems. We describe a project in this course where a student group, based on research, implemented help functions on a power wheel-chair. The Design-Build-Test course comprises both an industrial relevant student project and non-technical exercises like project management, teamwork (team dynamics) and communication. The goal is to create a learning environment where students from different study program work together in projects resembling the conditions for project work in the industry. We believe that this approach will promote valuable skills in the field of product and system development which is important for the students’ future role as engineers.

ID 59: IMU Platform for Workshops
Lukáš Palkovič, Jozef Rodina, Peter Hubinský
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia
This document describes a platform planned to use in our workshops on Robotics. It will help the students understand the way how accelerometers and gyroscopes are used for the inertial measurements. Students can train various methodologies of processing the signal coming from these sensors.

ID 61: Human machine interaction using head pose estimation
Simon-Alexander Zerawa, Stefan Kohlhauser, Charlotte Roesener, Andreas Perner
Institute of Computer Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
In course of the educational research project XINU (eXcellent Interface for Non-haptic Use) pupils, students, teachers and researchers developed a novel way to interact with and control elevators. Using standard web cams and state-of-the-art head pose estimation, distinctive and pre-defined head gestures are interpreted as explicit commands for a mechanical prototyped elevator model. For usability tests of the HMI (Human machine interface), a cursor-based application was created to allow a mouse-like selection of possible commands by only moving the head. In this article, the system approach and the project setting is described and the current implementation is presented.

ID 63: A Paradox in the Constructive design of Robotic projects in School
Javier Arlegui, Alfredo Pina, Michele Moro
University of Padova, Italy
In the training of teachers for teaching robotics at the primary school level, the methodological aspects of teaching and learning are important. Constructivist methodologies and project-based learning are two “quality” tools that are proposed to the teachers (in training courses) for the design of lesson plans. But, using them we can design constructivist teaching sequences which, although progressively lead to the resolution of real and complex situations, paradoxically may not lead to a parallel progression in the learning of robotic techniques. We emphasize here this paradox, showing two paradigmatic examples of constructivist lesson plans for the same theme "No-driver bus ...". Only the second one guarantees parallelism between the increasing semantic complexity of the problems and the positive gradient in the syntactic component of the robot programming.

ID 65: Using the Android Platform to control Robots
Stephan Goebel, Ruben Jubeh, Simon-Lennert Raesch, Albert Zuendorf
Kassel University, Germany
The Android Mobile Phone Platform by Google becomes more and more popular among software developers, because of it’s powerful capabilities and open architecture. As it’s based on the java programming language, it’s ideal lecture content of specialized computer science courses or applicable to student projects. We think it’s a great platform for a robotic system control, as it provides plenty of resources and already integrates a lot of sensors. The java language makes the system very attractive to apply state-of-the-art software engineering techniques, which is our main research topic.The unsolved issue is to make the android device interoperate with the remaining parts of the robot: actuators, specialized sensors and maybe co-processors. In this paper, we discuss various connection methods and present a first approach to connect Android with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics system, which we successfully used in our robotics/software engineering courses so far.

ID 67: Technikum Wien's entry in the Robotour'11 competition
Thomas Koletschka, Alexander Hofmann
University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, Austria
This paper describes the system for an autonomous ground vehicle developed by a team at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien. The goal is to deploy this robot in a city park in vienna and have it navigate autonomously from one point to another without colliding with any objects or driving off the permitted paths. We describe the hardware used by the robot and the software system based developed for this competition which is based on the Robot Operating System.

ID 69: The Kinect Sensor in Robotics Education
Michal Tolgyessy, Peter Hubinsky
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
This paper deals with education in the field of robot sensing abilities. It briefly introduces the commonly known and used concepts and sensors, but focuses mainly on the recent Kinect sensor. Technical information and background on the Kinect are provided. The last part of the article deals with possible applications of the sensor in various robotic fields with emphasis on the educational process.

ID 71: A Contribution to the Discussion on Informatics and Robotics in Secondary Schools
Alberto Barbero, Barbara Demo, Francesco Vaschetto
Dip. Informatica, University of Torino, Italy
The approach to Informatics in Italian secondary schools is being reshaped after the Reform effective from autumn 2010. Educational robotics can contribute to this reshaping because it allows students acquire a technological competence in Informatics as recommended by the Computer Science teachers and researchers in universities with the “Manifesto for Informatics in secondary school” issued in May 2010. During the school year 2010-2011, first year students of a technical institute, i.e. students about fourteen years old, have developed programming activities using Scratch plus S4A, Scratch for Arduino. This experience is proposed as a reference activity for a new Informatics curriculum in technical schools and, integrated with other components, to all types of secondary schools.

ID 73: Cross-Curricular Approach to Robotics in Interactive Museum-Pedagogy Environment
Nikolaos Fachantidis, Vassiliki Spathopoulou
University of Western Macedonia, Greece
In the scientific field of Museum Pedagogy, a construction and its interpretation, constitute the signifier and the signified for the educational procedure. It is a common sense that the presence of new technologies, by tangible or virtual means, should contribute in a useful and functional manner in order to preserve the museological structure respecting educational aims without underestimating the value of the museum exhibits. Sometimes it is common knowledge that the technological and the interactive museum exhibits could distract the visitor from cancelling the possible experiential learning. The implementation of the project “Ancient Greek theater” showed that the exploitation of robots in museum activities can contribute to the achievement of museum-pedagogical aims. The cross-curricular design is an important factor for the balance between social-humanities and technological studies. Also the intuitive control and the playful character of the interactive environment create and support engaged and experiential learning, which lead to better comprehension.

ID 77: Learning Robot-Environment Interaction with Neuroevolution
Martin Kysel, Pavel Petrovic
Comenius University, Slovakia
Modern methods for neuro-evolution save the time we spend with preparations. They are able to come up not only with the genome but also with the topology of the network. We want to see how one of these frameworks the "NeuroEvolu- tion of Augmenting Topologies" tackles this problems. We tested the promising abilities in a series of succeeding experiments.

ID 79: The TiRoLab Concept
Michael Sieb
Tiroler Roboter Labor, Austria
The “Tiroler Roboter Labor” short TiRoLab takes the fascination of robots to get girls, boys, young women and men into informatics as well as mechatronics and increases the self- confidence about their technical skills. We run a “Hands on Lab” and develop robotic workshops from kindergarten to school and beyond. This paper discusses the strategy behind the concept.