Hello, everyone, my name is Elad Inbar. I'm the CEO of Robot Lab, and today I want to talk to you about a solution that we are bringing to the schools for special education.
This was created by Movia Robotics, one of our partners for many years. This solution is backed by a lot of research that they did over the years. Professor Tim Gilford, one of the founders of this company. He specialized in special education in Connecticut. This is a solution we are happy to bring to you community, your school, and above all, to the kids. This is using any robotic platform that is available. We have three robots here. We have Kebbi, we have NAO and we have QT and each one of them is working the same way in engaging the students. The difference between them is the ability of the NAO to stand up and walk. Kebbi and QT are more stationary with more facial expressions and so on. The Movia solution is using a computer for the teacher that control the robots, and a tablet for the kids to work with the robots. The robots are the medium that facilitate the interaction and the learning with the students.
The reason we want to work with robots and kids with special needs, is that we as adults have a lot of unexpected emotion like body language, we have different tone of voice. This creates an anxiety with kids with autism. They prefer something that they're familiar with, something that is known. And they'll be able to interact with something that they know what the outcome should be. If they see something that is totally unexpected. What's going to happen is that they'll disengage, and they'll shut down all the communication and they'll go back to their own world. One of the therapists explained to me that the reason that sometimes kids prefer to knock their head on the wall, is that doing it hundred times gives them the feeling and the confidence that they know what's going to happen and how the hundred and first time will feel. We are trying to bring the same or similar experience with robots because robots will interact with the kids the same way, it will be the same motion, it will be the same tone of voice over again. And by developing this confidence in what's going to happen, students build the ability to open and learn and work with these robots.
On the teacher computer, they get a lot of activities, they can track specific students’ performance, they can evoke different interactions, either social emotional skills, counting skills, big and small, right and left, right and wrong. These kinds of skills, they're identifying human facial expressions, all these kinds of skills that are given to other kids, but kids with autism will have to work on that. The teachers get a lot of these activities on their computers. They can control the session, they can decide what the robot is going to say, how the robot is going to react and interact with the different experiences, I'm going to run one experience for you and just to show you how it works. So again, it doesn't matter if you're working with Kebbi, if you're working with QT if you're working with NAO the experience is the same. The difference obviously is the price point where Kebbi is the cheapest one and QT is in the middle and NAO is the most expensive. The main difference is that NAO offers legs and it can stand up and walk around and move around. Which these two are stationary, they can just move their arms and head and not the whole body like NAO. With that, let's just kick off and start at one interaction, this will be a warmup session.
QT Robot: Hi, my friend. Learning together is fun. Time for fun, my friend. Let's move our bodies to warm up.
Elad Inbar: What do we want to do.
QT Robot: Are you ready?
Elad Inbar: The teacher can say the child is ready or not.
QT Robot: Okay, move with me, copy what I do.
Elad Inbar: We want to get in sync with the child, so every activity will start with the same thing where the students need to run the same, experience the same motion and get in sync with the learning.
QT Robot: Touch the picture that shows the emotion happy.
Elad Inbar: Okay, I can just click that.
QT Robot: Nice job my friend. This cartoon face looks sad. Touch the picture that shows the emotion sad.
Elad Inbar: We need to reinforce the learning.
QT Robot: That was spectacular. This cartoon face looks mad. Touch the picture that shows the emotion mad. That was fantastic.
Elad Inbar: Okay, so what we'll do.
QT Robot: Let's try some questions. Now let's practice matching emotions.
Elad Inbar: The robot is going to introduce three faces and we'll have to choose one.
QT Robot: Think about the question. [05:56 inaudible] touch that picture. Which cartoon face shows the emotion happy?
Elad Inbar: Choose the happy this time.
QT Robot: Fantastic my friend. That was really good. Yes, my friend. You found the cartoon face that shows the emotion of happy. Let's try another one.
Elad Inbar: Now I'm going to make a mistake on purpose.
QT Robot: Let's try again together.
Elad Inbar: So always positive feedback.
QT Robot: I love your effort.
Elad Inbar: And praise the effort.
QT Robot: Which cartoon face shows the emotion sad?
Elad Inbar: I'll make another mistake here.
QT Robot: Let's try again together. Not quite, but you're almost there. Let's narrow it down. Which cartoon shows sad?
Elad Inbar: It recognize that they made two mistakes and now it narrowed down the solution. Let me choose the sad.
QT Robot: Nice. I'm so proud.
Elad Inbar: Thank you QT. So, this was an example of how a student can interact with the robot through this tablet. The tablet is minimizing the interaction and helping the student focus on just the thing that they need. They don't need to know anything else, click on one of the options and move forward in that. And if the student made a mistake, that's perfectly fine. The robot is going to give the positive feedback. And again, in the curriculum in the set of activities. The teacher therapists are getting many different interactions, many different skills that they want to develop, that we want the students to develop. The Movia Robotics team is adding more lessons and activities to the library of available activities. The same behaviour the same interaction can work on Kebbi can work on NAO you can agree who's me, I can work on many other robots.
This is something that is very powerful. Because the software can work the same with different robots. Kids that are a little bit intimidated by all this emotion will prefer to work probably was one of these. Kids that gain the confidence or are more advanced, can work with the NAO and they have a little bit more emotion, a little bit more body animation, which is a great tool for them in order to overcome this anxiety. We have these robots in hundreds of schools. We have won a large contract with the Department of Defence to place all these robots in Special Education Programs in the schools, in the Department of Defence in the Military base schools around the world. And we have seen tremendous success with that. And on top of that, we have many schools that are using it in the US and in other countries. If you have any questions if you need help, if you want to price quote, please contact us. Subscribe to the channel below to get more updates. And we'll see you on the next video. Thank you. Bye.
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