Using educational robot and tablet to improve wayfinding

Wayfinding is one of the most important skills that children have to learn in order to safely move in the environment. One problem that 6-7-year-old children encounter with wayfinding is changing their point of view to that of another person in different position in the same environment, such as that of a person opposite them whose perspective is turned 180° with respect to their own. Robots could help children in learning this skill, since children can instruct them to move in the environment, in predetermined paths, by starting from a rotated perspective. This study uses three different types of robot (humanoid robot, two types of non-humanoid robots, tablets’ robot-application) in order to evaluate how a specific activity (instructing a robot to perform a given route) enhances the wayfinding skills of 227 6-7-year-old children. The research shows that children who performed the wayfinding task with tablet’s robot-application improved their performance significantly better compared with those who used the other types of robots.

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