How to sustain long-term interaction between children and ROBOSEM in English class

摘要

According to studies confirming that robot assisted learning (RAL) can positively contribute to improving learners' motivation and achievement for language learning [1,4], RAL is facing its diffusion through the demand of parents and government. However, the biggest obstacle to the long-term interaction between humans and robots is the robots' low-success rate of visual and voice recognition, as well as the limitation of artificial intelligence for the daily-life HRI [3]. This study demonstrated ROBOSEM's ability to sustain long term interaction between children and a robot in an elementary English class from the pilot studies with IROBIQ, called Langbot [1]. Five factors are of concern in sustaining the long-term interaction between children and ROBOSEM, as shown in Figure 2: (1) enhancing the recognition ability of ROBOSEM with class materials, such as marker hats, bracelet watches embodied RFID tags, Wiimocon, etc; (2) sharing the birth story of ROBOSEM, which works to increase children's tolerance toward weak recognition from the result of [2]; (3) making a favorable impression, such as by flashing children's faces on the screen; (4) telling the history of a child's personal learning activities; and (5) tele-operation by the intelligence of a human being.