How smartly should robots behave?: Comparative investigation on the learning ability of a care-receiving robot

A care-receiving robot (CRR) is a robot designed to receive care from its human user. We proposed the concept of the CRR, and assume that allowing children to learn tasks by teaching the CRR is beneficial for their education. So far, we have confirmed the feasibility of the CRR for educational purposes. In the present study, we verified whether the CRR´s learning ability influenced the efficiency with which children acquire new knowledge. We conducted a field experiment in an actual classroom at an English language school for Japanese children. The target participants were children between 4-8 years old who attended the school. The participants attempted drawing various shapes along with the robot in order to enhance their knowledge of English words for these shapes (drawing game). The experiment was carried out under three conditions of the CRR´s learning ability as follows: an excellent robot that could answer all the questions correctly; a CRR that was capable of learning; and a CRR that was not capable of learning at all. From the experiment, it was found that the CRR that was capable of learning helped children learn unknown English words for shapes. In addition, correct demonstrations by the robot had a greater impact than that had been expected on children´s learning ability. The results obtained in this paper suggest that children benefited by teaching the robot and observing demonstrations by the robot.