Title :
Help, I need some body the effect of embodiment on playful learning
Author :
Looije, Rosemarijn ; Van der Zalm, Anna ; Neerincx, Mark A. ; Beun, Robbert-Jan
Author_Institution :
TNO, Soesterberg, Netherlands
Abstract :
Children with a chronic disease like diabetes need to learn how to self manage their disease. Knowledge about their condition is indispensable to reach this goal. Within the European project ALIZ-E a robot companion is being developed that should, among others attributes, have the capability to educate children. In this paper, a virtual agent on a screen is compared with a physical robot on the aspects of performance (learning), attention and motivation. The experiment consisted of two sessions in which children played a quiz consisting of health related questions with both the robot and the virtual agent, there was a week between the two sessions. It was found that performance and motivation were not affected by the embodiment, but the robot did attract more attention and, when forced to choose, the children had a preference for the robot.
Keywords :
biomedical education; diseases; educational robots; human-robot interaction; medical robotics; ALIZ-E; European project; children; chronic disease; diabetes; disease self management; health related questions; physical robot; playful learning; robot companion; virtual agent; Cameras; Diseases; Educational institutions; Games; Humans; Pediatrics; Robots;
Conference_Titel :
RO-MAN, 2012 IEEE
Conference_Location :
Paris
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-4604-7
Electronic_ISBN :
1944-9445
DOI :
10.1109/ROMAN.2012.6343836