Publications by Francesco Mondada

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In social insect colonies, many tasks are performed by higher-order entities, such as groups and teams whose task solving capacities transcend those of the individual participants. In this paper, we investigate the emergence of such higher-order entities u ...

In this paper, we present a distributed control strategy, enabling agents to converge onto and travel along a consensually selected curve among a class of closed planar curves. Individual agents identify the number of neighbors within a finite circular sen ...

Bio-mimetic robots can interact with groups of animals in bio-hybrid systems to study their behaviour by producing calibrated stimuli and by analysing their responses. Integrating a group of robots into a group of animals to mimic their behaviour is challe ...

Generalist primary school computer science (CS) teachers are often reluctant to introduce CS activities that go beyond CS unplugged tasks. To address this challenge, we drew from constructive alignment principles to implement a new programming modality for primary school: the handwriting programming language (HPL). HPL brings programming activities closer to existing teaching practices by enabling students to write instructions on paper, take a picture, and have an agent execute them. HPL’s applicability in

This workshop proposal aims to inform the design of teacher training on equity in the use and teaching of AI. AI is transforming both teaching practices and student learning environments and learning content. Teachers are increasingly using AI tools for co ...

A robot accepted by animals as conspecifics is a very powerful tool in behavioral biology, particularly in studies of gregarious animals. In this paper we present a robotic zebrafish designed for experiments on the collective animal behavior. The robot con ...

This paper presents the first cross-continental collaborative robotic event based around education. It was entitled R2T2 and it involved more than 100 children from Europe and Africa. Based on remote programming, video streaming feedback, and a scenario of ...

Mobile robots are said to be capable of self-assembly when they can autonomously form physical connections with each other. Despite the recent proliferation of self-assembling systems, little work has been done on using self-assembly to add functional valu ...

We present a communication based navigation algorithm for robotic swarms. It lets robots guide each other's navigation by exchanging messages containing navigation information through the wireless network formed among the swarm. We study the use of this al ...

A train-like miniature climbing inspection robot for ferromagnetic tubes is presented in this paper. Using magnetic wheels, it climbs in tubes of 25 mm of diameter and bigger in any orientation, and pass bends with curvatures above 150 mm in some cases. It ...

The paper describes the results of the evolutionary development of a real, neural-network driven mobile robot. The evolutionary approach to the development of neural controllers for autonomous agents has been successfully used by many researchers, but most - if not all - studies have been carried out with computer simulations. Instead, in this research the whole evolutionary process takes places entirely on a real robot without human intervention. Although the experiments described here tackle a simple task

We propose ASEA, a modular architecture for event-based control of complex robots. ASEBA runs scripts inside virtual machines on self-contained sensor and actuator nodes. This distributes processing with no loss of versatility and provides several benefits ...

Extended dataset for the validation the competent Computational Thinking test in grades 3-6 • If you publish material based on this dataset, please cite the following : • The Zenodo repository : Laila El-Hamamsy, Barbara Bruno, Jessica Dehler Zuffere ...

Recent progress in electronics has allowed the construction of affordable mobile robots. This opens many new opportunities, in particular in the context of collective robotics. However, while several algorithms in this field require global localization, th ...

SLAM is a prominent feature for autonomous robots operating in undefined environments. Applications areas such as consumer robotics appliances would clearly benefit from low-cost and compact SLAM implementations. The SLAM research community has developed s ...

Past research has shown that the use of tangible platforms for computingeducation can enhance students’ interest, engagement and collaboration within workgroups. However, to this day, the adoption of such interfaces in classrooms has remained relatively sc ...

We present the design approach and evaluation of our proto- type called “Ranger”. Ranger is a robotic toy box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. We evalu- ated Ranger in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of ...

Peer-argumentation is a well-researched instructional activity with demonstrated learning benefits, yet it remains challenging to implement in educational practice. Pedagogical conversational agents may help address this challenge, but research has so far paid little attention to their role as argumentative peers in dialogic learning tasks. To address this gap, we developed ArguBot, a didactic AI arguing partner that supports case-based argumentation by adopting opposing stances grounded in course materials

The importance of psychological safety in teams has been demonstrated in different settings. Team performance improves when team climate allows team members to be their authentic selves, to ask questions and raise concerns comfortably. However, it is less ...

In this paper we describe the evolution of a discrete-time recurrent neural network to control a real mobile robot. In all our experiments the evolutionary procedure is carried out entirely on the physical robot without human intervention. We show that the autonomous development of a set of behaviors for locating a battery charger and periodically returning to it can be achieved by lifting constraints in the design of the robot/environment interactions that were employed in a preliminary experiment. The eme

Francesco Mondada

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Division of Labour in Self-Organised Groups

Decentralized Self-Selection of Swarm Trajectories: From Dynamical Systems to Robotic Implementation

Multi-robot control and tracking framework for bio-hybrid systems with closed-loop interaction

The handwriting programming language for primary school: aligning computer science education with established teaching practices

Preparing Teachers for an Equitable AI Integration in Education

Development of a mobile robot to study the collective behavior of zebrafish

R2T2 : Robotics to Integrate Educational Efforts in South Africa and Europe

Performance Benefits of Self-Assembly in a Swarm-Bot

Communication assisted navigation in robotic swarms: self-organization and cooperation

Tubulo - a train-like miniature inspection climbing robot for ferromagnetic tubes

Automatic Creation of an Autonomous Agent: Genetic Evolution of a Neural Network Driven Robot

ASEBA: A Modular Architecture for Event-Based Control of Complex Robots

Extended dataset for the validation the competent Computational Thinking test in grades 3-6

Localization of inexpensive robots with low-bandwidth sensors

Affordable SLAM through the Co-Design of Hardware and Methodology

Introducing a Paper-Based Programming Language for Computing Education in Classrooms

Which Robot Behavior Can Motivate Children to Tidy up Their Toys? Design and Evaluation of "Ranger"

Arguing to Learn at Scale: A Semester-Long Study of an AI Arguing Agent in a Graduate Robotics Course

How to Support Students to Cultivate Psychological Safety in their Teams

Evolution of Homing Navigation in a Real Mobile Robot