Workshop Design for Hands-on Exploration Using Soft Robotics and Onomatopoeia

Hands-on exploration with robotics has been developed as a tool for creativity, but there are limitations with regard to accessibility. As a new method of creative and pervasive exploration for children and students, we propose a workshop using inflatable soft robots with short video recipes and onomatopoeia as a prompt. This method does not require prior knowledge or high fabrication costs and includes open-ended designs. Based on the soft robots obtained from five practical workshops with 131 participants, about 88% showed new structures and 61% exhibited advanced trials, which require deep consideration of the structures. The participants discovered new mechanisms themselves through exploration and used the given onomatopoeia to imagine their own storytelling for exploration. The results indicate the potential of our method to encourage both structure discovery and diverse expressions. It can be used as a tool for creative learning and a guideline for designing other approaches.