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Cleft lip and palate (CLP) is a congenital anomaly that can have detrimental effects on an individual's ability to produce certain sounds, including bilabial sounds such as /m/ and alveolar sounds such as /n/, as well as sounds that require closure between the nasal and oral cavities, such as sounds ending in /-Iŋ/. While surgical intervention can assist in correcting anatomical irregularities, consistent speech and language therapy sessions are often necessary to overcome obstacles associated with speech production. The research problem addressed in this study is the interruption of regular therapy, as evidenced by the discontinuation of services during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can lead to setbacks in progress and an increase in the risk of developmental delays in children. To explore the potential of educational robots to address this problem, this paper (i) investigates the user requirements, usability considerations, and attitudes to speech therapy robots, from the perspective of parents and carers of children with CLP, (ii) presents an experimental prototype for CLP language education and speech therapy using a humanoid robot, named Robot Lily, based on input from prospective users; and (iii) evaluates the prototype Robot Lily on a subject with CLP. The robot has been programmed to interact with the child in a naturalistic manner, using the same language and gestures employed by human speech and language therapists. The robot can respond to inquiries, practice articulation and pronunciation, aid the child with speech fluency, provide feedback, and encourage continued speech exercises. The primary interactions between a child with CLP and Robot Lily were observed and evaluated, with the robot shown to provide a unique opportunity to acquire speech and language abilities in a captivating and interactive manner. Compared to web-based applications, speech education assistant robots like Robot Lily may offer children a more appealing, engaging, and practical solution; and be remotely controlled by humans for specialized interventions at home, thereby circumventing the challenges encountered during COVID-19. These findings and methods have been used to develop an integrated model for ethical robotic speech therapy utilizing machine learning, which is expected to help meet the growing demand for speech therapy services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational/entertainment robots are usually designed to perform various gesture motions for nonverbal communication or interaction with humans[1]. This paper proposed a robot motion programming methodology by applying three-level robot motion hierarchical structure and a gesture variation method that can easily apply emotional attributes (Joy, Normal or Sad) to a robot's gesture. Experiments and evaluation tests are conducted with a graphical robot motion simulator and a real robot named Engkey, which is developed to carry out several tasks for interactive English education in elementary school or interactive games for elderly people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For an education purpose between an education robot and user, the robot needs to identify the location of the user and follow the user when the user stays or moves. In this work, a distance measurement scheme between a robot and user using ultrasound sensors and RF modules is introduced. Also, algorithms following the moving user with certain distance are addressed and those applications to the developed robot were implemented, showing the results including distance measurement and user-following. The robot control system is totally based on Android system, which makes the robot operation convenient and compact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we suggest an r-learning (robot-learning) system for children who are unfamiliar with educational tools. Our system is characterized with the following features. Firstly, the system provides children with personalized educational instructions considering their learning ability. In our system, learning contents for them are selected according to their learning history extracted from human-robot interaction data. Secondly, our system helps them learn educational contents easily and joyfully through various behavioral interactions with a robot. Third, r-learning scenarios are modeled with Petri-net to handle exception during learning and robot contents can be composed by use of predefined robot behaviors. Finally, we implement these system S/W using OPRoS which is a software platform for robotic services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To describe performance of a mobile robot requires non-trivial efforts since robot navigation itself comprises various kinds of sub-components and the performance thereof is highly influenced by the surrounding environment and a given task. In this paper, we focus on performance metrics for robot navigation which are intended for indoor service robots. More particularly, we propose a set of performance metrics that may be useful to describe various attributes of robot navigation intended for indoor educational robots. Localization, mapping, and path planning function are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With concern of robotics application in educational field, robot assisted language learning (RALL) has become of interest to second language learning researchers. This study aims to examine the effect of RALL compared to existing computer assisted language learning (CALL) on students' affective states and engagement towards English conversation class. For the field study, non-equivalent-groups quasi-experiment was employed with 66 Korean middle school students between CALL class and RALL class. The result revealed that there was marginally significant difference in the motivation; there was significant difference both in the participation and in the satisfaction between implementing robot and using computer in English conversation class. This result corresponds both with previous theoretical studies in SLA and with empirical studies in HRI. This study suggests that robot acts as a facilitator in language conversation class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]