In this month’s Executive Soapbox, Stephen Breslin looks at developments in robotic technology and the impact that this could have on education in the future.
Today, it is more acceptable than ever before to use machines to make life easier and better for all. However, in the future, robots with human-like characteristics may be able to do anything you want them to, including assist with learning.
Yet that does not mean that teachers will find themselves redundant in the future; it could point to a future where teachers still play a key role in students’ learning, but they are assisted by robots. As artificial intelligence improves and robots become able to cope with more realistic environments, it is easy to imagine that they will become integrated into learning, just like any other tool. But what form could they take?
Response and recognition is a vital skill for robots of the future if they are required to become mentors and teachers to children. A basic robotic machine that spouts French oral examination dialogue in the corner of the classroom and has a limited ability to respond proactively to students is likely to become a repository for used bubblegum within weeks. Yet imagine a robot that recognises individual students’ faces and voices and can remember what happened in the previous lesson, and maybe even have a sense of humour. That will have much more enduring appeal – and use - in the personalised learning environments of the future. Scientists have been studying how to give robots this humanoid trait of recognition for many years. One example was Kismet, the robotic platform developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001. Kismet was created with the idea that for robots to fit into and work better within human society, they should take on more human characteristics, a crucial one of which is the ability to recognise people. This would enable humanoid robots to build relationships with people, to contextualise them, and to learn.
Programmable modular robots, such as LEGO Mindstorms, could be extremely appropriate for education going forward. Mindstorms is used by learners of all ages – from 8 year-old children to learned professors. It is essentially engines and sensors fitted into LEGO pieces, so children can put objects together that can then be programmed from a computer to operate in whatever way is required. The act of programming is a useful skill for students to develop and this approach opens up a raft of other possibilities – those where control is awarded to the children rather than the machine.
Futurelab has used them in its Fountaineers project where, at Luckwell Primary School in Bristol, children and their teachers have worked together to create an intelligent fountain. The fountain is programmable and interactive, and uses LEGO Mindstorms’ sound, touch and proximity sensors so that children at the school can use it for a variety of purposes. For example, they use it for recreation, in science lessons, and for drama - where a special part would be written for it as an individual member of the cast. The idea was to give children tools to play and experiment with, and having the tool respond. The experiment aims to see if the fountain can change the old order of things, where the teacher stands in front and tells the children what they need to learn. Here, the children are deciding what to programme the fountain to do.
Another exciting development is coming from the USA. Rather than putting sensors in building blocks, Alison Druin, Director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab and Professor at the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, is putting them in icons – toys or parts of toys that act in a way that a child would expect them to, because of how they look, eg a toy’s hand that waves. Druin is looking at how robotic technologies can be used to enable collaboration, storytelling and learning in children.
And there is evidence that learners will be able to integrate socially with robots. At the University of California, San Diego, a Sony Qrio robot was introduced into a group of 2 year-olds as part of an experiment to see if the toddlers would accept the robot as one of them. Qrio giggled when touched on the head, moved about the room, and lay down on the floor when his batteries ran out. By the time the experiment was nearing its end, scientists had seen the children patting, touching and hugging the robot, treating it like another child, and when its batteries ran out, covering it in a blanket and saying “night night”.
Experiments like that are still in the early days, but the ability to socially interact with robots has a great impact on how useful they could be for learning. The Sony Aibo robot dog was taken to care homes in America in another experiment, along with real dogs. In the end, the old people became just as attached to the robot dogs as they did to the real ones.
So it seems we are not too far away from a world where robots play an active part in our children’s learning.
Stephen Breslin is Chief Executive of education charity Futurelab, whose research is dedicated to transforming learning through the use of innovative practice and technology.
www.futurelab.org.uk.
