Research Projects 3/4

Research Projects

We engage in multidisciplinary, iterative, and evidence-based research and development with diverse stakeholders to create new technologies, activities, practices and programs for real-world impact in homes, schools, afterschool programs and online communities. A list of publications for these projects can be found here.

Facemesh Camera Filter

Would you like to make your own facial filters? In this tutorial, we will be using facial landmark detection to create a filter camera using a new AI technology called Facemesh.

Awesome Dancing with AI Tutorial

Here you will learn how to use the new AI technology PoseNet to track key points of your body to create a skeletal model; develop some basic methods to quantify, measure and identify some dance moves.

Careers in AI

A video series about experts in AI.

PRG AI Blocks

Various extensions to the Scratch programming languages allow students to build AI-enabled projects.

Creativity & GANs for Middle School

Teaching middle school students the practices and ethical implications of creative machine learning techniques, such as GANs and style transfer.

Voice Calculator

In this project you are challenged to create your very first own Voice User Interface (VUI) as you build a voice-driven calculator that can do basic arithmetic operations.

Gizmo & ScratchX

Gizmo is a simple Arduino robot based off of the PopPet robot created by Jaidyn Edwards, and customized for our K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 grade AI curricula.

Personal Audio Classifier

This student guide/tutorial shows you how to use the Personal Audio Classifier website to train an audio model using short 1-2 second recordings.

Therapist Bot Tutorial

Can an app on your phone be your next therapist? This tutorial will show you how to make your own therapist bot app using App Inventor.

Rock Paper Scissors Tutorial

Use Rock Paper Scissors to create a program that allows the machine to observe and learn from its user's game choices using a Markov Model!

At-Home AI Conversations

4-Steps to Debating technology and AI with your child.

Primary School AI for 3-5th Grade

Primary AI for 3-5th grade introduces upper elementary school students to robotics, artificial intelligence, and design thinking.

Selected Publications

AI Education Peer-reviewed Research Articles and Preprints

MIT App Inventor - 2019

Design of a Virtual Tool for Estimating Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading

Ovienmhada, U., Lao, N., & Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Design of a Virtual Tool for Estimating Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading. 2019 International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI), 7724-7732.

Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming

Van Brummelen, J., Yeo, C., & Weng, K. (2019). Learning to program conversationally: A conversational agent to further democratize programming. 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED2020).

A Semantics-based Model for Predicting Children's Vocabulary

Grover, I., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Semantics-Based Model for Predicting Children’s Vocabulary. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-19), 1358–1365.

Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence

Van Brummelen, J. (2019). Conversational Agents to Democratize Artificial Intelligence. 2019 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), 239-240.

The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding

Van Brummelen, J., Shen, J.W., & Patton, E.W. (2019). The Popstar, the Poet, and the Grinch: Relating Artificial Intelligence to the Computational Thinking Framework with Block-based Coding. Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education, 160-161.

A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education

Park, HW., Grover, I., Spaulding, S., Gomez, L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Model-Free Affective Reinforcement Learning Approach to Personalization of an Autonomous Social Robot Companion for Early Literacy Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 687–694.

PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education

Williams, R., Park, HW., Oh,L., & Breazeal, C. (2019). PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 33, 9729–9736.

Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?

Ali, S., Moroso, T., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Can Children Learn Creativity from a Social Robot?. Proceedings of the 2019 on Creativity and Cognition, 359-368.

A is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children's Perceptions of Robots

Williams, R., Park, HW., & Breazeal, C. (2019). A Is for Artificial Intelligence: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Activities on Young Children’s Perceptions of Robots. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–11.

A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation

Spaulding, S., Chen, H., Ali, S., Kulinski, M., & Breazeal, C. (2018). A Social Robot System for Modeling Children’s Word Pronunciation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (Socially Interactive Agents Track), 1658-1666.

Learning to Program Conversationally: A Conversational Agent to Further Democratize Programming

Patton, E.W., Druga, S., & Van Brummelen, J. (2018). Panel: Block Abstractions for AI. Proceedings of the BLOCKS+ at Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH), 1-2.

Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer

Park, HW., Rosenberg-Kima, R., Rosenberg, M., Gordon, G., & Breazeal, C. (2017). Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 137-145.