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ViSION

Our vision is to reduce vulnerability in children and protect them from exploitation, violence, and abuse.

MISSION

Objectives are:

  1. Create a theoretical account of the ontology of skills, e.g., what distinguishes behaviors that are skills vs. behaviors that are not skills? What are skills composed of? 
  2. Create an account of people’s developmental trajectories as they move through different levels of a skill, beginning at a novice level, moving to intermediate levels and, possibly, arriving at expertise 
  3. Create an inventory of known models of learning skills (what models describe how skill levels are learned), possibly adding to that inventory 
  4. Conduct research to shed light on issues of theory, e.g., models of learning skills 
  5. Produce teaching products (technologies, curricula) that can foster skill development 
  6. Conducting evaluation research to test the effectiveness of these teaching products 
  7. Study the DNA of teaching, i.e., uncovering deep aspects of teaching, where skills are what is being 
  8. Scale up the tested technologies and curricula for fostering learning skills 

Thematic Areas

TEAM Members

Gayathri Manikutty
TAG Lead
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Educational Neuroscience, Human-Robot Interaction, and Computing Education
gayathri.manikutty@ammachilabs.org

Prof. Bhavani R Rao
Dean, School of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Research Interests: Vocational Education; Vulnerability Mapping; Rural Development; Educational Technology; Games for Change; and Computing in Social Sciences
bhavani@am.amrita.edu

⁠Pranav Prabha
Research Project Manager
Research Interests: Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for education, and Computing Education
pranav.prabha@ammachilabs.org

Sandeep Murali
Lab Manager
Research Interests: Learning Experience Using Extended Reality, Haptics, and Robotics
sandeep.murali@ammachilabs.org

Arjun Venugopal
Research Assistant
Research Interests: Neuroscience, Brain Computer Interface, Computer Vision, Neurorobotics
arjun.venugopal@ammachilabs.org

Ajeetha Rajan
Intern MSc. Cognitive Science, Learning and Technology
Research Interests:
Neuroscience, Neurotechnology
ajeetha.rajan@ammachilabs.org

Kaavya Lakshmi
Intern MSc. Cognitive Science, Learning and Technology
Research Interests: Social Robotics

Collaborators

Dr. Sidney Strauss
Full Emeritus Professor,
School of Education,
Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Veena Nair
Visiting Professor
Imaging Sciences
Department of Radiology
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, USA

Dr. Praveen Pankajakshan
Ex-Chief Scientist Cropin AI lab,
India

Funded Projects

Publications 2022 – 2025

  • Deepu, D. S., Rohith P, Krishnachandran, Jose James, Shankar Ramesh, and Shashi Kant Shankar. (2023, November 24-26). VR-based scaffold assembling simulator for construction industry training and Its evaluation for usefulness and immersiveness [Conference presentation]. 2023 IEEE Tenth International Conference on Technology for Education (T4E), Bombay, India.
  1. Manikutty, G., Potapragada, S. A., Pasupuleti, D., Unnithan, M. S., Venugopal, A., Prabha, P., … & Bhavani, R. R. (2024, June). Exploring Child-Robot Interaction in Individual and Group settings in India. In 2024 8th International Conference on Robotics and Automation Sciences (ICRAS) (pp. 37-42). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRAS62427.2024.10654467  
  2. Muravevskaia E., Abhijith A., Prabha P., Unnithan, M. S., Arunav, H., Rthuraj, P., Kanukunta, R., & Manikutty, G. (2023). Designing empathy game: Case on participatory design session with children within the Indian context. In Proceedings of the 22th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC ‘23) (pp. 459-463).  https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3593862  
  3. Ramakrishnan, K., Deepu, D. S., James, J., & Rao, B. (2023, July). Effectiveness of haptics gloves for learning motor skills in virtual reality scaffolding simulator. In Proceedings of the 2023 6th International Conference on Advances in Robotics (Article No. 15, pp. 1-6). ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610419.3610434  
  4. Sasi, D., Krishnachandran, S., Rohith, P., James, J., Ramesh, S., Rajendran S, V., & Rao R., B. (2023, July). Design and evaluation of wearable haptics device for weight perception in vocational trade. In Proceedings of the 2023 6th International Conference on Advances in Robotics (Article No. 31, pp. 1-6). ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610419.3610450  
  5. S. Sasidharan et al., “Handwashing Action Detection System for an Autonomous Social Robot,” TENCON 2022 – 2022 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2022, pp. 1-6, doi:  https://doi.org/10.1109/TENCON55691.2022.9977684  
  6. Pasupuleti, D., Sasidharan, S., Sharma, R., & Manikutty, G. (2022, August). Exploring collaborative game play with robots to encourage good hand hygiene practises among children. In 2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) (pp. 308-315). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900712   
  7. Pranav Prabha, Sreejith Sasidharan, Devasena Pasupuleti, Anand Das, Gayathri Manikutty, and Rajesh Sharma. 2022. A Minimalist Social Robot Platform for Promoting Positive Behavior Change Among Children. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2022 Educator’s Forum (SIGGRAPH ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 3, 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532724.3535597  
  • Haidegger, T., Mai, V., Mörch, C. M., Boesl, D. O., Jacobs, A., Rao, B. R., Khamis, A., Lach, L., & Vanderborght, B. (2023). Robotics: Enabler and inhibitor of the sustainable development goals. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 43, 422-434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2023.11.011  
  • Pasupuleti, D., Sasidharan, S., Manikutty, G., Das, A. M., Pankajakshan, P., & Strauss, S. (2023). Co-designing the embodiment of a minimalist social robot to encourage hand hygiene practises among children in india. International Journal of Social Robotics, 15(2), 345-367. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-023-00969-3  
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