Developing and benchmarking show & tell robotic puppet for preschool education

Abstract

Robots have been shown to assist in education and development of social skills in children. However, there has been no study yet that benchmarks the effectiveness of robots with respect to traditional playtools found inside a classroom, such as pretend play items and blocks. This paper presents the design, development and testing of robotic puppets, which would be used to support teaching in kindergarten education. Different types of robotic puppet design were considered before settling on a glove-type puppet. To benchmark the robot performance, a total of 52 five year-old children were observed, from which quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The result of the study indicates that when playing with the robotic puppets, the performance of the children with respect to thinking and learning, creativity and imagination, and social interaction and independence, is comparable to other traditional playtools.978-1-4799-6923-4/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

Education 4.0: Robotics Projects to Encourage 21st Century Skills

“…Fifty-two five-year-old children were observed to assess the robot's performance, from which quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The study indicated that robotic toys could improve learning, creativity, imagination, and interaction (Causo et al, 2015).…”

Are pre‐service teachers disinclined to utilise embodied humanoid social robots in the classroom?

“…We define social robots as physically embodied autonomous robotic technology, equipped with artificial intelligence and social skills, developed to become equal partners in social relations, capable of human‐like situational and role appropriate interaction (Istenic et al., 2021). At this stage, however, research and development in the field of social robotics still tend to focus more frequently on technology applications (Causo et al., 2015; Park, Han, et al., 2011; Verner et al., 2016), human–robot interaction (HRI) (Keren et al., 2012; Lücking et al., 2016) and affective outcomes (Belpaem et al., 2018), for example, motivation and engagement (Brown & Howard, 2014), than on the instructional robot's use in different curricular areas (Crompton et al., 2018; Rosanda & Istenic Starcic, 2019, 2020). There are few studies examining social robots performing teaching roles (Fernández‐Llamas et al., 2018).…”