AR Square Kit is a kit that teaches children the practice of computational thinking through the experience of augmented reality in a creative and playful way. It is an augmented ecosystem builder where the user has to use physical tiles to program paths for an augmented drone. AR Square Kit is supported and has been created to expand the gaming experience of Project Square, an existing open educational project developed by We Are Play Lab Foundation. It is an unplugged k-12 educational learning kit for computational thinkers, made for developing critical 21st century skills in children age 6-12 years old. The main target is to support teachers and children to create engaging learning contexts, through small scale challenges. AR Square Kit aims to add to the playfulness of the Square project, the technological component so far absent, fusing the educational potential of the computational thinking practice with the technological one, through augmented reality.

AR Square Kit works on a modular basis: each physical tile, already present in the existing Square Kit represents a different ecosystem’s module. Square contains 27 tiles in total, composed of 3 different colors and 3 basic symbols, circle, square and triangle. Each symbol is associated with a different 3D model typology: the square represents the constructed modules, such as villages and cities; the natural forms are associated with the circle, such as lakes and mountains; the triangle instead is associated with the directional modules, which will serve as input to the drone to move on the augmented playground. 
The Kit is designed to work on mobile device.

In the first phase, the user composes the game landscape. Here is given a great freedom of composition.
The main experience offered by the AR Square Kit is the freedom of composition of landscapes and paths for the augmented drone. This drone is an autonomous entity, meaning that it can only move thanks to specific combinations of physical tiles. The main purpose is to capture collectibles that will appear along the way and consequently be able to satisfy delivery requests.  It is necessary to program an ideal path so that the drone can collect the collectible and take it to its destination. Succeeding in the goal of automating a loop by connecting the drone to all constructed tiles, all requests will be automatically met and the game will end. But will it really be possible? 

In the future, it will be possible to pause the ongoing programmed path, and through a specific button, enter another phase of the game: the drone will reduce scale by moving inside the module on which it is located. It will therefore be possible to approach the physical tile to notice that now the drone has become smaller and can interact with the interactive elements of the single module.

The movement program is defined by placing a triangular physical tile in the desired direction, and the Drone will automatically move in that direction. This will automatize the movements of the drone and tying the interactions between physical and augmented worlds. Three different variations of movement have been defined based on the number of triangles present in the physical tile: the physical tile with a single triangle imparts a mono-directional order, programming the drone to move only one module towards the direction dictated by the direction of the triangle; the physical tile with two triangles gives a bi-directional order (loop), giving the user the opportunity to set a direction priority; the physical tile with three triangles instead gives a bi-directional order (like the previous one), with the difference that it will program the drone to move two modules towards the direction dictated by the direction of the triangles. 

AR Square Kit has been developed using Unity, Blender and Rhinoceros. It works on Android mobile devices that support augmented reality.

The main menu is designed to contain all the activities developed in the AR Square Kit, a settings menu and an informative menu about the project / We Are Play Lab Foundation.  A swipe bar at the bottom allows the user to select the desired activity. With each change of activity, the background image accordingly changes.  In the upper left part there are two buttons: the Tutorial button allows the user to start a scripted activity in order to learn the basic rules of the activity; the Play button launches the main activity. At the first selection of the button an information window appears. It shows the information necessary for the proper preparation of the playground and some random tips. At the second selection of the button the activity is launched. In the middle right section the user can choose the drone to play with. A first selection of the button opens a shortcut window. a second selection activates the desired drone.

The possibilities offered by augmented reality are growing exponentially. Since tools like ARCore, Vuforia, ARKit have been released for free, designers and developers have been given a great opportunity to launch this technology in the market. The potential for its integration into more complex areas, such as education, is real. Nevertheless the examples in this regard are still few and very often limited to the simplest interactions. For this project, it was therefore necessary to have a very experimental approach. The risks of failure were high, having in my hands a new technology I’ve never explored so far, I took the opportunity to assimilate the basics of tools like Blender, Rhinoceros and Unity.  The goal set by this project is still very complex to achieve, but the successes reported during the prototyping phase show that it is feasible to develop an AR kit to teach computational thinking to children aged 6 and up. 

We Are Play Lab

Project Square