EmbraceKit is a combination of e-textile and robotics toy for intergenerational communication and social emotional learning. This project seeks to employ constructionism toy and intergenerational communication as a strategy to support children aged 5-8 who live apart from their grandparents to develop SEL skills to help them identify nuances of different emotions, self-awareness, generate proper responses to others emotions and emphasize with others.
The blanket and robot are both customizable and users can use these elements for intergenerational communication and social emotional learning purposes. The robot is able to perceive sounds and to react to the emotions expressed by the elders through minimal behaviors. EmbraceKit is designed to be used as media and constructive experiences that can be related to emotional intelligence.
The toy is designed for children aged 5-8 who live apart from their grandparents to develop SEL skills.
It is also designed for the elders who would like to have meaningful intergenerational communication with their grandchildren.
Learning experience designer, Built the robots and the e-textiles, Code development
The lack of communication between the elderly and their grandchildren has become a prevalent issue in modern society. The opportunities for children and older adults to communicate with each other are shrinking sometimes due to the geographical mobility and generation gaps (Thompson & Weaver, 2016), especially during the critical time of pandemic.
The exacerbating mental problems of younger children are addressed as well. Anxiety and depression affect many children. 7.1% of children aged 3-17 years old have diagnosed anxiety and 3.2% of children aged 3-17 years (approximately 1.9 million) have diagnosed depression (CDC, 2020). Less than half of K-12 students reported that they had social competencies such as conflict resolution skills, decision-making skills, and empathy (Benson, 2006).
In the attempt of achieving the learning goals emerging from the preliminary research, the construction toy composed of a sound reactive and message transmitting robot and electronic textile was developed. This project is also framed from a constructionist perspective which emphasizes that children are “active agents” in their learning process and that learners construct their knowledge by making an artifact and thinking with tangible objects.
“EmbraceKit” brings elders’ feelings to live and help children learn about different types of emotions by interacting with the small robot. The codes are pre-built within the micro:bit editor where learners can grab the pre-built functions easily and customize the final product. The actions, music that the robot emits, its gestures and movement are triggered by the blanket where four major emotions are embedded.
This toy includes four essential parts, a electronic blanket with pre-attached sensors and micro controller, a robot made with recycled items, guiding instructions where prompts for facilitators are presented and pre-built code chunks in the micro:bit editor. Children can also use the recycled items to which they can easily have access to customize the robot or even replace the robot with their creations.
The blanket has a light sensor, a sound buzzer, disco led lights and different emotions. The emotions embedded are happy, sad, fear and the feeling of being loved. Different emotions will trigger different expressions displayed on the robot.
The blanket set is designed for simulating different types of emotions and the trigger for outputs and will get feedback from the robot to create the response loop.
For example, when grandparents cover the blanket, they can hear the soft music and the lights up which aims to simulate the feeling and the joy of being hugged. The feelings of being loved will be transferred to the robot which will ask for a hug from the kid. When grandpa feels fear, both the robot and blanket will show heartbeat. The robot will ask for a hug because they are afraid.
The robot has different sensors and outputs to carry out certain emotions triggered by grandparents.
A Ultrasonic sensor, a sound detector and two servos are attached to the robot. It will demonstrate corresponding actions and mood by moving or shaking the “hands”. The robot presents an explicit input-output relation that easily allows children to see the effects of their actions.
Pre-built block code functions are quite important in the last task of children if they would like to code by themselves. This project tries to empower learners to emphasize others by customizing their response to the robots. The pre-built code blocks and functions enable children to customize the interaction by adjusting the music played, the hugs or they can remove the sensors to change the reactions of the robot by disabling the functions or rewrite the code chunks provided.
Since this project aims to support social emotional learning skills for children and intergenerational communication, story sharing could should be a different approach. However, it is still challenging for me to figure out solutions to recording stories from either the blanket or robot and to sharing their stories through message sending. Moreover, the emotions presented on the blanket should be more diverse and the project should be able to support more reaction functions for the kids to customize.
I will also develop something more cuddly which might be more friendly to children and add more interesting inputs and outputs.