People-Centered Development of a Smart Learning Ecosystem of Adaptive Robots

Robots are currently moving out of the laboratory and company floor into more human and social contexts including care, rehabilitation and education. While those robots are usually envisioned as a kind of social interaction partner, we suggest a different approach, where robots become adaptive tools for facilitating social interaction and learning in special needs education. The paper presents a people-centered design and development process of such a system that is rooted in the close collaboration between the developers and a network of users and caregivers.