(March 14, 2016) New
social robot from MIT helps students learn through personalized interactions
Parents want the best for their children's education and
often complain about large class sizes and the lack of individual attention.
Goren Gordon, an artificial intelligence researcher from Tel
Aviv University who runs the Curiosity Lab there, is no different.
He and his wife spend as much time as they can with their
children, but there are still times when their kids are alone or unsupervised.
At those times, they'd like their children to have a companion to learn and
play with, Gordon says.
That's the case, even if that companion is a robot.
Working in the Personal Robots Group at MIT, led by Cynthia
Breazeal, Gordon was part of a team that developed a socially assistive robot
called Tega that is designed to serve as a one-on-one peer learner in or
outside of the classroom.
Socially assistive robots for education aren't new, but what
makes Tega unique is the fact that it can interpret the emotional response of
the student it is working with and, based on those cues, create a personalized
motivational strategy.
Testing the setup in a preschool classroom, the researchers
showed that the system can learn and improve itself in response to the unique
characteristics of the students it worked with. It proved to be more effective
at increasing students' positive attitude towards the robot and activity than a
non-personalized robot assistant.