Educational robots for children in primary school

Abstract

Technology is constantly evolving and people are trying to find new techniques to help students and children to learn faster and with less effort. An educational robot is not a new innovation as such, but it is only now becoming more popular as technology evolves. Since social robots are becoming more and more common and therefore educational robots are as well. While the use of educational robots in the classroom is not very common yet, there is an increasing number of research made on the subject. This study is trying to find out what kind of impact an educational robot could have for the children in learning.

The method of this study is literature review based on research in the field and it is divided into two sections. First section is focusing on the benefits and challenges of educational robots. A lot of research has been made about the benefits of the educational robots, especially on children with special needs (e.g. ADHD). Challenges, however, were harder to find since all the studies were solely focusing on the benefits rather than the challenges. The latter section is focusing on the design of the robot. What the robot should look like, how tall it should be and what features it should have in order to have the children feel as secure and comfortable as only possible while interacting with the educational robot. This study shows that educational robots could have a positive influence on the children and their learning. Long-term use, however, is still an open question since the studies are focusing more on the short-term use of educational robots.