From a parent coordinating movements to help a child learn to walk, to a violinist training a concerto, humans rely on physical interaction to learn from each other and from the environment. Building on a strongly multidisciplinary foundation with an integrated approach, CONBOTS proposes a paradigm shift that aims to augment handwriting and music learning through robotics, by creating a physically interacting robotic platform connecting humans in order to facilitate the learning of complex sensorimotor tasks. The newly designed platform will combine four enabling technologies: i) compact robotic haptic devices to gently interact with upper limbs; ii) an interactive controller yielding physical communication, integrating differential Game Theory (GT) and an algorithm to identify the partner’s control; iii) a bi-directional user interface encompassing AR-based application-driven serious games, and a set of wearable sensors and instrumented objects; iv) Machine learning algorithms for tailoring learning exercises to the user physical, emotional, and mental state CONBOTS is building on recent neuroscientific findings that showed the benefits of physical interaction to performing motor tasks together, where the human central nervous system understands a partner motor control and can use it to improve task performance and motor learning. This will be implemented on innovative robotic technology, wearable sensors and machine learning techniques to give rise to novel human-human and human-robot interaction paradigms applied in two different learning contexts: i) training graphomotor skills in children learning handwriting; ii) augmenting learning performance in beginner musicians. Using its neuroscience-driven unifying approach to motor learning and physical communication CONBOTS will expand the impact and the application of robotics to the education industry.

Taking into account the fact that buildings constitute the largest end-use energy consuming sector, the design and development of solutions targeted at reducing their energy consumption based on the adoption of energy efficient techniques and the active engagement of citizens/occupants is considered crucial. Innovative solutions have to be implemented upon properly understanding the main energy consuming factors and trends, as well as properly modeling and understanding the citizens’ behaviour and the potential for lifestyle changes. The ENTROPY project addresses this challenge by building upon the integration of technologies that facilitate the deployment of innovative energy aware IT ecosystems for motivating end-users’ behavioural changes and namely: (1) the Internet of Things that provides the capacity for interconnecting numerous devices and applying energy-efficient communication protocols, (2) the evolvement of advanced Data Modelling and Analysis techniques that support the realization of semantic models and knowledge extraction mechanisms and (3) the Recommendation and Gamification eras that can trigger interaction with relevant users in social networks, increase end users’ awareness with regards to ways to achieve energy consumption savings in their daily activities and adopt energy efficient lifestyles as well as provide a set of energy efficient recommendations and motives. Novel practices that fully integrate information collected from a set of sensor networks and mobile crowd sensing activities are going to be exploited along with processes for monitoring, reporting and analysing sets of data with regards to energy consumption and the behavioural profile of citizens. The engagement and inclusion of end users will be strongly supported upon the development of a set of serious games and personalised applications. The designed IT ecosystem is planned to be validated in three pilot sites.