Developing and benchmarking show & tell robotic puppet for preschool education

Robots have been shown to assist in education and development of social skills in children. However, there has been no study yet that benchmarks the effectiveness of robots with respect to traditional playtools found inside a classroom, such as pretend play items and blocks. This paper presents the design, development and testing of robotic puppets, which would be used to support teaching in kindergarten education. Different types of robotic puppet design were considered before settling on a glove-type puppet. To benchmark the robot performance, a total of 52 five year-old children were observed, from which quantitative and qualitative data were collected. The result of the study indicates that when playing with the robotic puppets, the performance of the children with respect to thinking and learning, creativity and imagination, and social interaction and independence, is comparable to other traditional playtools.