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With the development of educational robotics, teachers of secondary and high school frequently request clear indications on which type of robot is most effective for strengthening students' mental schemes on the robot. This paper investigates whether using crafts and recycled materials or structured materials to build robots is more effective in terms of pupils' cognition in educational robotics. Some scholarship argues that using crafts and recycled materials to build a robot from scratch is more effective than using structured materials. The design of the educational research applied here, and in which we tested this hypothesis, included two different robotics activities, carried out in Italy with two classes of secondary school. In the first, we asked the students to build a robot from scratch using crafts and recycled materials, while in the other we asked the students to build a robot from structured materials. These two activities were preceded and followed by the completion, by students, of the same questionnaire about knowledge of mechanics, manual skills, conceptualization of robots, and beliefs about the robotization of everyday life machines, which were the learning outcomes identified in this study according to the concept of constructive alignment and outcome-based education. Results show that building a robot from scratch increases pupils' knowledge and manual skills, while building a robot with structured materials increases their awareness of the robotization of machines. Thus, current scholarship's approach is only partially confirmed. To conclude, although pupils' appreciation involves equally both these robotics activities, each of these outlines a specific educational outcome.

In robotics, a field of research still populated by prototypes, much of the research is made through videos and pictures of robots. We study how the highly human-like robot Sophia is perceived through a YouTube video. Often researchers take for granted in their experiments that people perceive humanoids as such. With this study we wanted to understand to what extent a convenience sample of university students perceive Sophia's human-likeness; second, we investigated which mental capabilities and emotions they attribute to her; and third, we explored the possible uses of Sophia they imagine. Our findings suggest that the morphological human-likeness of Sophia, through the video, is not salient in the Sophia's representations of these participants. Only some mental functions are attributed to Sophia and no emotions. Finally, uses of Sophia turned out to be connected to the gender stereotypes that characterize stereotyped women's professions and occupations but not completely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of educational robotics, teachers of secondary and high school frequently request clear indications on which type of robot is most effective for strengthening students' mental schemes on the robot. This paper investigates whether using crafts and recycled materials or structured materials to build robots is more effective in terms of pupils' cognition in educational robotics. Some scholarship argues that using crafts and recycled materials to build a robot from scratch is more effective than using structured materials. The design of the educational research applied here, and in which we tested this hypothesis, included two different robotics activities, carried out in Italy with two classes of secondary school. In the first, we asked the students to build a robot from scratch using crafts and recycled materials, while in the other we asked the students to build a robot from structured materials. These two activities were preceded and followed by the completion, by students, of the same questionnaire about knowledge of mechanics, manual skills, conceptualization of robots, and beliefs about the robotization of everyday life machines, which were the learning outcomes identified in this study according to the concept of constructive alignment and outcome-based education. Results show that building a robot from scratch increases pupils' knowledge and manual skills, while building a robot with structured materials increases their awareness of the robotization of machines. Thus, current scholarship's approach is only partially confirmed. To conclude, although pupils' appreciation involves equally both these robotics activities, each of these outlines a specific educational outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on drone systems is expanding rapidly and finds application in many fields. These systems provide powerful and precise means in several domains from surveillance to agriculture. If we look inside a drone system, we will find several parts: the aerial vehicle(s), the onboard sensors, a computing device, and the autopilot, a communication network, a ground control station, control software, and a security module, encrypting commands and messages. In a multi-drone application, the system becomes more complex and coordination along with synchronization of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) forms the strategic parts of the whole system. This manuscript focuses on an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) application and investigates a complete HW/SW architecture for a number of deployments where the secure control architecture is based on the MAVLink protocol for automatic control of the UAVs fully enabled by audio and video acquisition and processing. Indeed, one of the key features and novelties introduced by this proposal is the combined use of audio and video inputs, in order to provide a more precise and robust detection of targets and the related reaction of the system. The proposed system setup, user control scheme, ciphering and synchronization methods, and the related experiments are explored for laying the basis for future ideas and developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate on children's knowledge and imaginary about robots. To do so, we administered to 704 children from 17 classes of 8 elementary and secondary schools, a survey with close and open questions about their conceptualization of robots. To carry out this study we took as point of reference the theoretical framework of social representations. The main results are that children evaluate toys, robots and human-beings as significantly different on all the characteristics considered. More than toys, robots have mechanical movements, they move, are more intelligent than toys but they do not keep company to them. By contrast, human beings are perceived by children starting from their corporeity: they eat and sleep, move by themselves, are intelligent and speak, keep eye-contact and company. However, children complain about the fact that human beings do not play with them. The imaginary about robots that children receive from media is characterized by anthropomorphic shapes, bodies and by human-like cognitions, feelings and behavior. The more examples of visual products with robots children are able to evoke, the higher they evaluate robots on all human-like characteristics (e.g. it looks into my eyes). Hence, the tension between imaginary and knowledge can be confounding because the human-like features of fictional robots are more advanced than those reachable by the factual ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]