Children and young people with disabilities of different types may have problems playing alone or with companions even without disabilities. A competition is proposed to realize small robots or electronic objects that must be used by these people to play, using resources made available by the course. The activity must lead to working objects that could be safely evaluated. The technologies that can be used may include Arduino, or ESP32, Raspberry PI, apps on the phone, sensors, and actuators. The aim of the laboratory is to provide the opportunity to work in a practical way with materials, sensors, actuators and microprocessors to achieve a defined, socially useful goal. Transversal project and team management skills will be developed during the project. The learning process is constructivist (Papert) based on learning by doing: students, who are expected to have either basic programming or design skills, will receive a two-hour introduction related to the use of sensors and actuators, two hours relative to the design of technological games, and two hours relative to problems of disability that will have to be faced, starting the co-design activity with the end users. Participants will be organized in groups of 4 people maximum, maximizing the degree of interdisciplinarity. In the previous editions of this lab, the participation of different types of Engineering and Design students enabled the production of interesting devices. During all the activity they will be supported by the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory (AIRLab). Furthermore, every week, on a defined day, it will be possible to interact with the teacher for feedback and suggestions. On the final day, the produced toys will be tested on the field, if functioning properly. The quality of the product will be evaluated by a panel of experts for 50% from a technical point of view, and for 50% from an application point of view; awards will be given to the first three classified. In the end, the works will be left with the end users who will participate in the definition of the specifications and in the final test. Items that pass this assessment will participate in a national tender for assistive technologies. The activity is one of the activities of the initiative Playbot4All (http://playbot4all.polimi.it/).

dal February 2021 a June 2021