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Robot Musical Theater for promoting STEAM Ed & Integrated Art Performances

Robot Musical Theater for promoting STEAM Ed & Integrated Art Performances
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You will learn what we have done in the robot musical theater and have a hand-on experience with each of our social robots through interactive demos such as controlling the robots' speech and movement, drawing with robots, and making music with robots.

Our robot musical theater project consisted of two parts: afterschool Program at Eastern Montgomery Elementary School and Robot Musical Theater for Climate change Education at the Cube.

The after school program was a 13-week program that promotes Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) education to the elementary students at Eastern Montgomery Elementary School through effective human robot interactions (HRI) that took place in Fall, 2021. The present section of this research project investigates the impact of HRI on a child-robot theater platform. The ultimate goal for the students was to create a robot theater play based on the scenes from the Wizard of Oz by utilizing the knowledge they gained in the after-school program. Many social robots were involved in this program, and four modules were designed to further help the students understand different technical aspects of the robots: Acting, Dancing, Drawing, and Music. Those modules help students to create a basic understanding of the mechanisms of Robotics, HRI, Social Robots and help them use robots to create the robot theater at the end.

The robot musical theater project was performed at the VT Science Festival 2021. The goal for the present section of the project is to address the climate change issue by utilizing social robots with immersive system (eg. Cyclorama - 360 display) to facilitate STEAM education. Each of our four social robots represented each natural elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. Through this interactive robot performance, the audience were able to understand the global warming while having an immersive experience at the Cube.

The Mind Music Machine Lab from the ISE department collaborates with the Cognitive Developmental Science Lab from the HDFS department during the process with the after school program to enhance the project performance not only from the technical aspects but also from the child development aspects. For example, student researchers were able to deliver the robot lectures to the elementary school students in an interactive way with appropriate and effect teaching speech. We also collaborated with students, staff, and faculty from the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, the Department of Human Development and Family Science, the School of Performing Arts, the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the Department of Computer Science, and the Center for Educational Networks and Impacts for the robot musical program. Therefore, we got the remarkable experience to learn and implement immersive technology to our project. The researchers were also able to deliver the project efficiently and collect quantitative and qualitative data from child and teacher interviews, surveys, and observation during the research project. At the end, children, teachers, and parents left the research project with positive reviews and the results suggest that the robot theater programs maintain and advance students' interest and curiosity in STEAM education.

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Organization

Team

  • Jiayuan Dong, College of Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering
  • Shuqi Yu, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Human Development and Family Science
  • Ariana Wyatt, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, School of Performing Arts
  • Tanner Upthegrove, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology
  • Koeun Choi, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Human Development and Family Science
  • Devanshu Vajir, College of Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering
  • YeaJi Lee, Industrial and Systems Engineering
  • Chelsea Lyles, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Center for Educational Networks and Impacts
  • Myounghoon Jeon, College of Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mind Music Machine Lab