Section: Dissemination

Popularization

Teaching and Education

Inirobot

IniRobot (a project done in collaboration with EPFL/Mobsya) aims to create, evaluate and disseminate a pedagogical kit which uses Thymio robot, an open-source and low cost robot, for teaching computer science and robotics.

IniRobot Project aims to produce and diffuse a pedagogical kit for teachers and animators, to help them and to train them directly or by the way of external structures. The aim of the kit is to initiate children to computer science and robotics. The kit provides a micro-world for learning, and takes an inquiry-based educational approach, where kids are led to construct their understanding through practicing an active investigation methodology within teams. See https://dm1r.inria.fr/ or http://www.inirobot.fr.

Deployment: After 4 years of activity, IniRobot is used by more than 3000 adults, 30 000 children in France. Inirobot is also used in higher education, for example in Master 2 "Neurosciences, human and animal cognition" at the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse. Inirobot is additionally used to train the management and elected officials of the Bordeaux metropolitan area (20 people). The digital mediators of the 8 Inria centers are trained to Inirobot and use it in their activities.

The project continues to be carried out in main collaboration with the LSRO Laboratory from EPFL (Lausanne) and others collaborations such as the French National Education/Rectorat d'Aquitaine, the Canopé Educational Network, the ESPE (teacher's school) Aquitaine, the ESPE Martinique, the ESPE Poitiers and the National Directorate of Digital Education.

Created pedagogical documents and resources:

• The inirobot pedagogical kit [83]: This pedagogical booklet provides activities scenarized as missions to do. An updated version of the Inirobot pedagogical kit is available at: https://dm1r.inria.fr/uploads/default/original/1X/70037bdd5c290e48c7ec4cb4f26f0e426a4b4cf6.pdf. Another pedagogical booklet has been also created by three pedagogical advisers for primary school, with pedagogical instructions and aims, under our supervision. The new pedagogical kit,“Inirobot Scolaire, Langages et robotique”, which extends Inirobot to a full primary school approach is available at http://tice33.ac-bordeaux.fr/Ecolien/ASTEP/tabid/5953/language/fr-FR/Default.aspx

• Inirobot website and forum: https://dm1r.inria.fr/ or http://www.inirobot.fr On this website, teachers, animators and general public can download documents, exchange about their use of inirobot's kit.

Inirobot activities are used by several projects: Dossier 123 codez from Main à la Pâte Fundation, Classcode project, ...

MOOC Thymio

Didier Roy played a central role in the design and making of The MOOC Thymio, released in october 2018, in collaboration with Inria Learning Lab and EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), on FUN platform and edX EPFL Platform), use Inirobot activities to teach how to use Thymio robot in education. Web: https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/course-v1:inria+41017+session01/about

Poppy Education

As part of the Poppy Education project, thanks the robotic platform Poppy we created pedagogical kits open-source and low cost for teaching computer science and robotics. It is designed to help young people to take ownership with concepts and technologies of the digital world.

The Pedagogical kits includes robots and pedagogical resources. They have been co-created directly with users (mainly high schools teachers) and evaluated in real life by experiments in classrooms [120].

The activities were designed with the visual programming language Snap! (Scratch like) and Python, but some are in Java / Processing (thanks the robot API you can use the language of your choice).

Most activities are using the robot Poppy Ergo Jr, but some use Poppy Torso (mostly in higher school because of its cost) and Poppy Humanoid (in kinder-garden for dance projects) :

• The Poppy Ergo Jr robot is a small and low cost 6-degree-of-freedom robot arm. It consists of simple shapes which can be easily 3D printed. It has several 3D printed tools extending its capabilities (there are currently the lampshade, the gripper and a pen holder but you can design new ones). They are assembled via rivets which can be removed and added very quickly with the OLLO tool. Each motor has LEDs on (8 different color can be activated). The electronic card (raspberry Pi) is visible next to the robot, that allow to manipulate, and plug extra sensors.

• The Poppy Torso robot is an open-source humanoid robot torso which can be installed easily on tabletops. More affordable than the robot Poppy Humanoid, it is an ideal medium to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

We continued to improve the robots functionalities and you can see below the resources we created :

• A website have been created to present the project and to share all resources and activities.

  https://www.poppy-education.org/

• To complete the pedagogical booklet [119] that provides guided activities and small challenges to become familiar with Poppy Ergo Jr robot and the Programming language Snap! (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2jV8VX-lQHwTUxXZjF3OGxHVGM/view) we provided a list of Education projects. Educational projects have been written for each activity carried out and tested in class. So each projects have its own web page including resources allowing any other teacher to carry out the activity (description, pedagogical sheet, photos / videos, pupil's sheet, teacher's sheet with correction etc.). Their is now 32 activities documented available on Poppy Education website.

You can see the activities on this links (in french):

• Introduction to Ergo Jr and Snap! :

  https://www.poppy-education.org/activites/initiation-ergo-jr-et-snap

• Ergo Jr and Python tutorials :

  https://www.poppy-education.org/activites/tuto-python-robot-ergojr

• High-school levels :

  www.poppy-education.org/activites/activites-lycee

• Middle-school level :

  www.poppy-education.org/activites/activites-college

• Primary Schools level :

  https://www.poppy-education.org/activites/activites-primaire/

• Demonstrations (just videos to show the possibilities) :

  https://www.poppy-education.org/activites/demos/

• We continued to improve the documentation of the robotic platform Poppy (https://docs.poppy-project.org/en/) and the documentation has been translated into French (https://docs.poppy-project.org/fr/.

• A FAQ have been written with the most frequents questions to help users: https://www.poppy-education.org/aide/

• New activities on Poppy Education website and forum.

• New section : Activities with Python.

• Improvements in the Resources page of the Poppy Education website.

Talks and Hands-on

• Thibault Desprez, December 2018 at Inria Bordeaux, welcomed three students from middle-school during two days to discover the working environment and to introduce them to robotics.

• Thibault Desprez, Inria Bordeaux open day, November 2018, exhibition stand to present Poppy Education and Poppy robots

• Thibault Desprez, National Meeting of Educational Robotics, October 2018 at ifé ENS Lyon, two talk to present Poppy robots kits in school.

• Thibault Desprez, National Meeting of Educational Robotics, October 2018 at ifé ENS Lyon, exhibition stand to present Poppy Station and Poppy robots.

• Thibault Desprez, Théo Segonds, Fête de la science (Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest), October 2018, 4 programming workshop in 2 days (with middle school students) using Snap! and the robot Poppy Ergo Jr.

• Thibault Desprez, Meet-up & Educate, October 2018 at INP Bordeaux, exhibition stand to student recruitment for a project on Poppy robots.

• Thibault Desprez, PI space inauguration, July 2018 at ESPE Mérignac, exhibition stand to present Poppy Station and Poppy robots.

• Thibault Desprez, Bordeaux Geek Festival, May 2018, Parc expo, Talk about societal problem on robotics.

• Thiabult Desprez, Usine Végétale inauguration, May 2018 at Le Fieu, exhibition stand to present Poppy Education and Poppy robots in rural zone.

• Thibault Desprez, Connect’thouars, April 2018 at Talence, Workshops to initiate in programming.

• Thibault Desprez, Didapro 7, February 2018 at HEP Vaud, Lausanne, talk to present the article : "Poppy Ergo Jr : un kit robotique au coeur du dispositif Poppy Éducation"

• Thibault Desprez, Théo Segonds, Fondation Main à la pate, February 2018 at Paris, Two days to train a group of teachers to robotics and programmation with Poppy Ergo Jr robot.

• Thibault Desprez, e-Fran seminar, January 2018 at Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, poster to present my thesis.

• Théo Segonds. Poppy Ergo Jr Workshop at CERN (Geneve). Construction and programming of the robotic arm Poppy Ergo Jr.

• Théo Segonds. Scientae Robotica, Lausanne. Poppy Ergo Jr Workshop. Construction and programming of the robotic arm Poppy Ergo Jr.

• Benjamin Clement and Alexandra Delmas, EdTech days, may 2018. Presentation of kidlearn and kidbreath projects.

• Theo Segonds, Didier Roy. PLAIRE Festival in Evian with Poppy exhibition during 2 days.

• Alexandra Delmas, Didier Roy. Forum Educavox in Bordeaux. Presentation of kidlearn and kidbreath projects.

• Didier Roy. R2T2 Richter event, remote robotics programming, in caribbean islands, in collaboration with EPFL.

• Didier Roy. Inria Scientific Days, presentation of educational projects in Flowers Team.

• Stephanie Noirpoudre. Poppy Education présent à la journée EIDOS 65 : Le forum des pratiques numériques pour l'éducation. Description and feedback of the 9th edition of the EIDOS 65 day (the digital practice forum for education).

• PY Oudeyer mentored students from College de Cadillac for their robotics project (2 days), march 2018.

• PY Oudeyer gave a talk "Intelligence artificielle: un outil pour nous aider à mieux comprendre l'intelligence naturelle?" at Collège Cadillac, Gironde, may 2018.

• PY Oudeyer gave a talk "Intelligence artificielle: apprentissage automatique et sciences cognitives" at a training event for members of Bordeaux Metropole political and decision staff, Nov. 2018.

• PY Oudeyer gave a talk "Intelligence artificielle: apprentissage automatique et sciences cognitives" at Université de Tous les Savoirs, Arcachon, janv. 2018.

Popularizing inside Inria

• Théo Segonds and Thibault Desprez. Poppy Ergo Jr training for Inria Scientific Mediation members.

• Inria National Scientific Mediation Seminar: Presentation by Stéphanie Noirpoudre and Théo Segonds of Poppy Ergo Jr, and workshop.

• Sébastien Forestier made a presentation on models of curiosity-driven development at Unithé ou Café.

Innovation and transfer

• Since 1 september 2017 until february 2019, PerPoppy and Poppy Station Projects : D. Roy, P.-Y. Oudeyer. These projects aim to perpetuate the Poppy robot ecosystem by creating an external structure from outside Inria, with various partners. After the Poppy Robot Project, the Poppy Education Project has ended and Poppy Station structure is born. Many exchanges have already taken place with potential partners such as the EPFL, the ENSAM network, the «Ligue de l’Enseignement», Génération Robots, the French Institute of Education, several academies, the direction of digital education of the Ministry of Education, ... PerPoppy is the project which is building the new structure, and Poppy Station is the name of the new structure. Poppy Station, which includes Poppy robot ecosystem (hardware, software, community) from the beginning, is a place of excellence to build future educational robots and to design pedagogical activities to teach computer science, robotics and Artificial Intelligence. https://www.poppystation.org

Internal or external Inria responsibilities

D. Roy is member of the Class'code team (Inria is member of the consortium of this project) https://pixees.fr/classcode/accueil/. Class'code is a blended formation for teachers and animators who aim to initate young people to computer science and robotics. D. Roy has in charge the robotics module of the project.

D. Roy is adviser of the organization of computer science exhibition in "Palais de la découverte" which has begun on 2018 March. He helps for robotics part.

D. Roy is member of the team "Education en Scène" which organize educational activities with robotics in Bordeaux Digital City.

D. Roy is member of the scientific committee of "Learning Computer Science at School" project in Canton de Vaud (Switzerland).

D. Roy is member of the Robocup Junior French committee, an international robotics challenge http://rcj.robocup.org/.

D. Roy is member of the scientific committee of "Ludovia CH" Conference which will be held in Yverdon (Switzerland) on 2019 March.

D. Roy is project co-leader of MOOC Thymio, in collaboration with EPFL and Inria Learning Lab. The aim of this MOOC is to propose to teachers a training on basics of computer science, using the robotic platform Thymio.

D. Roy is associate member of the EPFL "LEARN" center.

PY. Oudeyer continued to be the PI of the Poppy Education project.

PY. Oudeyer was scientific mentor for stiudents of College de Cadillac, within the program "Main à la pâte" of Maison des Sciences.

Articles and contents

• Adrien Laversanne-Finot wrote a blog post on "Discovery of independently controllable features through autonomous goal setting", https://openlab-flowers.inria.fr/t/discovery-of-independently-controllable-features-through-autonomous-goal-setting/494

• Cédric Colas wrote a blog post on "How Many Random Seeds Should I Use? Statistical Power Analysis in (Deep) Reinforcement Learning Experiments", https://openlab-flowers.inria.fr/t/how-many-random-seeds-should-i-use-statistical-power-analysis-in-deep-reinforcement-learning-experiments/457

• Cédric Colas wrote a blog post on "Bootstrapping Deep RL with population-based diversity search"

• PY Oudeyer was interviewed for an article of The Economist on curiosity-driven learning, http://www.pyoudeyer.com/TheEconomist2018.pdf

• PY Oudeyer was interviewed for an article of Scientific American on curiosity-driven learning, http://www.pyoudeyer.com/IntelligentMachinesThatLearnLikeChildren-Scientific%20American2018.pdf

• PY Oudeyer was interviewed for an article of MIT Technology Review on curiosity-driven learning, http://www.pyoudeyer.com/may17MITTechnology%20Review.pdf