Designing an Engaging Robotic Teaching Assistant for Adults Using the Engagement Profile

Abstract

We report on an exploratory study conducted at a graduate school in Sweden with a humanoid robot, Baxter. First, we describe a list of potentially useful capabilities for a robot teaching assistant derived from brainstorming and interviews with faculty members, teachers, and students. These selected capabilities consist of reading, greeting, alerting, remote operation, clarification, and motion. Second, we present feedback on how the robot's capabilities, demonstrated in part with the Wizard of Oz approach, were perceived, and iteratively adapted over the course of several lectures, using the \EP tool. Third, we discuss observations and findings regarding the capabilities and the development process. Our findings suggest that using a social robot as a teaching assistant is promising using the chosen capabilities. We find that personalizing the capabilities and the role of embodiment are important topics to be considered in future work.