Communication Robots for Elementary Schools

This paper reports our approaches and efforts for developing communication robots for elementary schools. In particular, we describe the fundamental mechanism of the interactive humanoid robot, Robovie, for interacting with multiple persons, maintaining relationships, and estimating social relationships among children. The developed robot Robovie was applied for two field experiments at elementary schools. The first experiment purpose using it as a peer tutor of foreign language education, and the second was purposed for establishing longitudinal relationships with children. We believe that these results demonstrate a positive perspective for the future possibility of realizing a communication robot that works in elementary schools.