We report results of a study in which a low cost sociable robot was immersed at an Early Childhood Education Center for a period of 2 weeks. The study was designed to investigate whether the robot, which operated fully autonomously during the intervention period, could improve target vocabulary skills of 18-24 month of age toddlers. The results showed a 27% improvement in knowledge of the target words taught by the robot when compared to a matched set of control words. The results suggest that sociable robots may be an effective and low cost technology to enrich Early Childhood Education environments.
10 aAlgorithms 10 aautonomously operated robot 10 aEarly Childhood Education Center 10 aEducational institutions 10 aEducational robots 10 aGames 10 ahuman factors 10 aHuman-robot interaction 10 aintervention period 10 aPediatrics 10 aRobot sensing systems 10 arobotics 10 asociable robot 10 asocial aspects of automation 10 atime 2 week 10 atoddler vocabulary skills 10 aUbiquitous computering 10 aVocabulary 1 aMovellan, J. 1 aEckhardt, M. 1 aVirnes, M. 1 aRodriguez, A uhttps://rubi.ucsd.edu/content/sociable-robot-improves-toddler-vocabulary-skills 02582nas a2200373 4500008004100000020002200041245007500063210006900138260003100207520141200238653002801650653003201678653002201710653001601732653001001748653001401758653002301772653002001795653001601815653002801831653002001859653002801879653002301907653001901930653002801949653002201977653003001999653001102029100001502040700001802055700001502073700001702088856010302105 2008 eng d a978-1-4244-2661-4 00 aBuilding a more effective teaching robot using apprenticeship learning 0 aBuilding a more effective teaching robot using apprenticeship le aMonterey, CA bIEE c08/2008 3 aWhat defines good teaching? While attributes such as timing, responsiveness to social cues, and pacing of material clearly play a role, it is difficult to create a comprehensive specification of what it means to be a good teacher. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to obtain examples of expert teaching behavior by observing a real teacher. With this inspiration as our guide, we investigated apprenticeship learning methods [1] that use data recorded from expert teachers as a means of improving the teaching abilities of RUBI, a social robot immersed in a classroom of 18-24 month old children. While this approach has achieved considerable success in mechanical control, such as automated helicopter flight [2], until now there has been little work on applying it to the field of social robotics. This paper explores two particular approaches to apprenticeship learning, and analyzes the models of teaching that each approach learns from the data of the human teacher. Empirical results indicate that the apprenticeship learning paradigm, though still nascent in its use in the social robotics field, holds promise, and that our proposed methods can already extract meaningful teaching models from demonstrations of a human expert.
10 aapprenticeship learning 10 aautomated helicopter flight 10 aAutomatic control 10 aData mining 10 aDelay 10 aeducation 10 aEducational robots 10 aexpert teaching 10 aHelicopters 10 aHuman-robot interaction 10 ahumanoid robots 10 aHumans Learning systems 10 amechanical control 10 arobot teaching 10 aRobotics and Automation 10 aRUBI social robot 10 atime 18 month to 24 month 10 atiming 1 aRuvolo, P. 1 aWhitehill, J. 1 aVirnes, M. 1 aMovellan, J. uhttps://rubi.ucsd.edu/content/building-more-effective-teaching-robot-using-apprenticeship-learning