Improving language skills and encouraging reading habits in primary education: A Pilot Study using NAO Robot

Abstract

NAO is a popular social robot that has been used in educational settings to assist with teaching as well as to increase engagement and motivation of students. While features like speech recognition, object detection, sensors in robots may be close to making them human-like, they are still a long way from being able to fully mimic human behavior. In this study, we present a pilot study that involves a quiz based interaction with primary level students for an English language learning course where these features are thoroughly tested and analysed. Based on the results of the study, it was found that the voice module of NAO requires refinement for smooth dialog-based communication, while the object detection engine performed fairly well in a quiz based scenario with primary level students.