(ORDO NEWS) — Canadian research engineers have designed a small humanoid robot to work with children with learning disabilities.
Experiments have shown that a robot assisting a human teacher helped students to better absorb the material and focus more on the learning process.
Scientists from the University of Waterloo (Canada) have been adapting robotics for many years to help people with disabilities and mental disorders.
Now they have created a robot to help children with learning disabilities.
These disorders include dysgraphia and dyslexia, disorders in which children have difficulty reading and writing, respectively, and the less common dyscalculia, an inability to learn arithmetic.
Other psychiatric disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), may also contribute to learning difficulties.
In recent years, educators in the US and Canada are increasingly using social robots to assist in learning. However, most often this concerns children with autism spectrum disorders.
For the first time, scientists conducted a series of experimental lessons for children with learning disabilities with a small humanoid robot dubbed QT.
QT is equipped with a face replacement screen on which he can reproduce facial expressions, he is able to gesticulate with his head and hands, and also talk.
The scientists presented the robot at the International Conference on Social Robotics in Florence (Italy).
In the experiment, the researchers divided 16 students with learning disabilities into two groups. In one group, students worked only with the teacher, in the other – with the teacher and the QT robot.
The teacher used the tablet to control his assistant, who then independently performed various actions using speech and gestures.
In addition to teaching? the robot also monitored the condition of the students.
When they were distracted, he entertained them with jokes and riddles, conducted short games and a series of breathing and physical exercises that helped the students to distract themselves in order to return to the learning process with renewed vigor.
According to the results of the study, schoolchildren who studied in the group with the robot as a whole were more involved in their tasks, were able to complete them at a higher speed and were less distracted, compared with children from the control group.
In addition, both teachers and students spoke positively about the classes along with QT.
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