Spot It! Mathematics through computer vision

Abstract

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the institute of Technology of Valenciennes has been participating to Festival of Science for many years. Workshops about scientific subjects are organised in sessions of one and a half hour for groups of twelve participants. Participants come from different types of schools: from primary schools up to high schools. Workshops are designed, prepared and then animated by the students of the institute. The workshop that is presented in this article has been designed by 6 second year students as a project linked with a Computer Vision and Robotics module. Knowledge from the first-year module about Logic and Numeration (especially binary calculation) and more generally from the modules of Mathematics (especially homogenous coordinates for geometric transformations used in Robotics). The workshop is built around a popular matching cards game called “Spot It!” or “Dobble” depending on the countries. In the first part of the article the context of the experiences is described. In the second part, the game is described, a mathematical model is explained and allows the design of a simplified Spot It! game. The third part explains the method chosen to write the screenplay of the workshop, while part four gives the screenplay of the workshop as it results from the work of students.