The EduRoboKids project of the Centre for Literacy of the University of Malta is introducing social robots in schools in Malta and Gozo.

The purpose of the project is to explore children’s interaction with a social robot in a school setting. Already a number of successful sessions involving Tommy the social robot have been held in classrooms during regular lessons. Both teachers and students have shown themselves to be enthusiastic and they are active participants throughout. The teachers and Learning Support Educators are involved directly in preparing the sessions with Tommy the social robot. Tommy is a humanoid social robot that speaks, moves and even sings and dances.

Our objective is to study how verbal and multimodal interaction takes place between humans and robots. We are interested in how children respond verbally and emotionally to robots in learning situations as well as what kind of problem-solving situations children have in communicating with robots. In learning situations, the role of the parent or the teacher changes to a facilitator or a mediator in the communication. In this project the use of the robot is to be defined entirely by the users, and not by the researchers. We are exploring the interactions and attitudes of children with regard to the social robot in mixed-ability classroom settings. There will be a focus on children with special needs, like those on the autism spectrum disorder, together with their respective teachers and LSEs. The pilot study is investigating the potential of the social robot as a learning companion for children in the classroom and for children with special needs in the achievement of select Individual Education Plan goals. The studies of the social robot with children with different needs in a mainstream school setting.  

Prof. Charles L. Mifsud, the Director of the Centre for Literacy at the University of Malta has said: “We are delighted to be bringing this cutting-edge technology of the future to our schools. We are seeking to ensure that the work with the social robot is integrated well into the school curriculum and the classroom teaching and learning plans. Tommy the social robot is serving as a teaching companion for the teachers and as a learning companion for the children with diverse abilities and educational needs for them to be able to achieve their learning outcomes.”

Mr David Caruana, the head of a participating school, has expressed his satisfaction that the social robot is being introduced to classrooms at his school. “Both the teachers and the children have shown themselves to be enthusiastic about this AI-driven technology of social robots. It is being used to support the regular teaching and learning programmes in our school and serving to increase the levels of motivation of our children, who come from diverse backgrounds”.

The project has received seed funding from the Residency Malta Agency.