The RobotTheater project focuses on building a new model of cooperation between the technical, artistic and humanistic fields with the aim of improving the exchange of knowledge and reducing the gender gap among young people. The main goal of the project is to increase interest in both, robotics and theater, develop innovative learning materials and resources, build educators' capacities, and improve mutual understanding and cooperation between professionals in these fields through interdisciplinary projects. Therefore, the specific objectives of the project are: (1) exchanging good practices among partner countries, (2) providing tools, methodology and approaches to facilitate the acquisition of the necessary skills for learning and teaching about robotics and theater, (3) increasing the interest of teachers in acquiring competencies that they need for multidisciplinary projects involving robotics and theater, (4) developing informal learning aimed at strengthening theater and robotics professionals, and (5) creating a comprehensive guide that includes a methodological framework, video guidelines, and an action and recommendation plan for robotics and theater professionals.
Robotics is a popular discipline in the field of technical sciences that includes knowledge from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computing. Although there are many initiatives in the field of robotics, it is still not present as subject in schools, but as an extracurricular program. Theater and drama, on the other hand, are a combination of art and the humanities and are present in schools through the mother tongue and literature subjects, as well as extracurricular programs. In the literature, it is possible to find several attempts to combine these areas, but this is often unavailable to schools due to lack of the necessary equipment, high costs and specific knowledge from both areas. This project, using the partners' domain knowledge, aims to explore and bring the combination of these areas closer to schools. Additionally, traditionally robotics is associated with boys, while theater is more associated with girls. Reducing these prejudices encouraged us to implement the project. Through work on a multidisciplinary project of a theater play with robots, everyone involved will have the opportunity to learn the basics of both fields, thus earning the confidence and potentially choosing it as their career path.