Sofia Tancredi

DESIGN. MATH. MOVEMENT.

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    TeleTangibles Project

    Side by side images showing someone holding a 3d-printed tangible quadrilateral being tracked with computer vision, and a digital quadrilateral that is matching its shape.

    TeleTangibles are a new genre of interactive STEM education tool that enable collaborative tangible+digital discovery learning.

    Key features of TeleTangibles:

    • tangible tools tracked with realtime digital twins enable dynamic interaction with digital feedback
    • sensing and actuating to enable co-manipulated with peers acting manually or digitally
    • reconfigurable toolkit adaptable to different digital STEM learning contexts
    Two hands move haptic modules on a desk. On the computer screen in front of them, it shows the haptic experience they are feeling: an actuated joystick under their palm pointing towards 2 o clock.
    Sketches of planets and force vectors overlayed onto moveable haptic modules that enable sensing these relations.

    Team

    TeleTangibles is an interdisciplinary collaborative project, including members from:

    • CHROME Lab (Mechanical Engineering, St Louis University)
    • PhET Interactive Simulations Research and Accessibility (Physics, University of Colorado Boulder)
    • the Embodied Design Research Lab (Learning Sciences, Berkeley School of Education, University of California, Berkeley)

    My role in the TeleTangible team includes working on the tools’ pedagogical interaction design, research design, and data analysis.

    Project News

    • Our paper “Blind and visually impaired learners’ spatial explorations and imaginations with haptic technologies in STEM education co-design” was accepted to the Accepted to the American Education Research Association (AERA) conference for 2026
    • The TeleTangibles project was awarded an NSF-RITEL Grant in 2024. Any opinions,  findings  and  conclusions  or  recommendations  expressed  in  this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
    • A paper on the development of the Quad won best paper at the Conference on Research on Educational Neuroscience in 2022.

    Quadrilateral: the First TeleTangible

    Labelled photographs of the 3d-printed Quadrilateral. In the first image, it is in a square formation, and in the second, the sides are extended longer and it is a parallelogram. The image labels half-inch indentations that serve as tactile length markers along the sides of the quadrilateral, as well as locking mechanisms to lock the side length for precise length control.

    Quadrilateral, the first proof-of-concept TeleTangible, is an inclusive born-haptic digital geometry tool. Quadrilateral integrates an actuated and sensing manipulable quadrilateral tangible with a digital interface with voicing and sonification that can be used via touchscreen, keypress, webcam, and other interactions to facilitate meaningful mathematical interactions for learners with different sensory and motor access needs to learning together.

    Open-Access Tool

    Screenshot of a virtual simulation interactive quadrilateral.

    The digital portion of Quadrilateral is available open-access here:

    https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/quadrilateral: TeleTangibles Project

    On Building the Quad

    Hear more about Quadrilateral from Scott Lambert, myself, Brett Fiedler, Jenna Gorlewicz, and Dor Abrahamson at the Università di Macerata Inclusion week in March, 2022:

    Or read more about developing the Quad in our 2022 article in the Italian Journal of Health Education, Sports and Inclusive Didactics:

    lambert-tancredi-fiedler-moore-gorlewicz-abrahamson-paloma-2022-getting-a-grip-on-geometryDownload
    Photograph of about 20 different quadrilateral prototypes of assorted sizes and styles, ranging from a set of chopsticks rubber-banded together to 3d-printed, wired sensing-acutuating versions.
    Family portrait of Quadrilateral prototypes across development