Educational Robots & Robotics - SIG EduRobotX

Robots of different kinds are becoming increasingly widespread in industry, research and everyday life. Educational robots are beginning to be used to support learning as smart teaching platforms, co-teaching assistants, learners’ companions, facilitators of learning activities, and even co-learners.

“Educational Robotics is a field of study that aims to improve the learning experience of people through the creation and implementation of activities, technologies and artefacts, where robots play an active role. (…) This definition covers existing categories of the use of robotics in education: robotics as a learning object, robotics as a learning tool, and as a learning aid.” Angel-Fernandez, J.M., & Vincze, M. (2018).

Robots in education fall into three main categories:

1. Social robots, focusing on embodied (humanoid, zoomorphic robots, etc.), autonomous support for teaching, learning and support, and socially assistive robots.
2. Telepresence robots, focusing on enabling teleoperated, interactive presence,
3. Educational robotics, focusing on the use of robotics as tools to foster STEAM (not only STEM as done before), language, strategies and a wide range of skills including soft, generic and specific skills.

While the pedagogical potential of educational robotics in STEM education has been extensively explored since the 1970s in the domains such as computer programming, mathematics and engineering design, the use of social robots, telepresence robots and educational robotics is a more recent approach, driven by new developments in hardware (including diversity of sensors) and artificial intelligence (including recognition of speech, patterns, and emotions). Educational robotics have been therefore popular in STEM education, with the focus on introducing students to robotics and programming, mostly through building and programming robots capable of performing various tasks.

The new forms of social robots include anthropomorphic or humanoid robots (e.g. Pepper, NAO, Alpha Mini), and service and telepresence robots (e.g. Temi, BellaBot). These social robots are used in education to assist teachers in their pedagogical tasks, support learners in attaining learning outcomes in various domains, enhance the quality of teaching and learning experiences, as well as support teachers and students in finding information, e.g., in libraries, and orientation in space, e.g., on a campus. Also, educational robots can be applied to support a diversity of learners including learners with special educational and psychological needs, including learning disorders, in this way contributing to inclusion. Furthermore, social robots have the potential to connect learners from different population groups and facilitate co-learning and collaboration in diverse groups.

Telepresence robots are used to create a more interactive and immersive experience of presence for teachers, students, and other stakeholders who participate remotely. The potential of telepresence robots stems mainly from their ability to convey the sense of the physical presence of a remote person, who can also use the telerobot to move in a remote space and interact with other persons in that space through mediated presence, which is missing in traditional software-based approaches.

This Special Interest Groups aims to bring together research and development in the different categories of robots in education to stimulate exchange of good practice and encourage joint explorations in the fields such as robot-assisted language learning (RALL), remote participation of students and teachers, facilitation of interactive learning activities in physical spaces, active involvement of students in learning activities through physical interaction, as well as support for critical thinking and complex problem solving with the help of different kinds of robots including ones endowed with a human-like appearance and social abilities.