Abstract:

Thymio is an educational robot born from the collaboration of the MOBOTS (Miniature Mobile Robots Group) of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne with the Art School of the same city. Thymio's software and hardware schemes have been designed as Open Source and Open Hardware to allow the continuous improvement and development of the robot. It can be programmed with software such as Scratch, Blockly and Thymio VPL. Basically, Thymio presents six pre-installed behaviours useful to start discovering and getting to know the instrument. Each behaviour corresponds to a predefined colour: if sociable, Thymio glows green; explorer, yellow; fearful, red; investigator, blue; obedient, purple; careful, blue.

The main purpose of our pilot project, which also included a small experimentation, was to observe the impact of educational robotics activities - conducted with Thymio in nursery school - on basic skills and socialization processes. In particular, our goal is to check the effect on the knowledge of the concepts of space-time relationship of children and on some soft skills that we have identified as: attention and interest in the current activity, collaboration with classmates, request and offer of help, respect for rules and of one's turn, communication and discussion with classmates and with the teacher. We point out that to date there are numerous researches carried out with the Thymio robot in high school orders, while no control investigations have been carried out in nursery schools.

The research method involves the formation of an experimental group and a control group to which the TCR (Test of Relational Concept - spatial and temporal) is administered before and after the experimental phase. All the children were introduced to the Thymio robot and carried out introductory robotics activities. Subsequently, while the control group follows the traditional paths of the Italian ministerial curriculum, the experimental group follows robotics activities on the soft skills envisaged by the project. The activities carried out are observed by the researchers using specially designed investigation tools. At the conclusion of the planned works, which lasted about three months, the two groups were given TCR again. The behaviour of children during the performance of the final task (which involves the use of Thymio), in which collaborative activities are required and which include the soft skills identified above, is also noted.

Currently, a first exploratory survey has been carried out on a group of thirteen children from the "Il Micino" kindergarten in Turin (Italy). The period of the educational robotics laboratories started in December 2019 and ended in February 2020. The research was documented with photos, videos, drawings, a diary and the compilation of the observation grids required by the protocol. It was not possible to carry out the final phase of the investigation due to the closure of schools following the COVID-19 pandemic. The results obtained by the laboratories carried out are promising, even if it was not possible to complete the research. A large-scale experimentation is expected shortly.

Keywords:

Thymio, nursery school, soft skills, spatial and temporal concepts.