September 2017

Robotics for Education

The aim of this effort is to developsocial robotic systems that canhelp primary school-aged childrenlearn, whether this is in schools,public places, or elsewhere. Muchis not known about how childrenbest learn and how robots canbest help with this process, sothere is much to discover. This iswhy we seek the help of children,parents and teachers: for themto contribute to cutting edge re-search, learn about what we doand how we do it, and hopefullyto get an enjoyable experience outof it in the process.

Work with us!

We’re always interested in work-ing with new schools (specificallyprimary school ages). For moreinformation, please contact us, ortake a look at the Robotics for Ed-ucation webpage.

Quicklinks. . .

• Robotics for EducationHomepage

• Lincoln Centre for Au-tonomous Systems

• School of Computer Sci-ence, University of Lincoln

Contact Information

Dr. Paul BaxterSenior Lecturer in Computer ScienceSchool of Computer ScienceUniversity of LincolnEmail: pbaxter@lincoln.ac.ukTel.: +44 (0)1522 83 7962Web: http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/pbaxter

Social Robots for Education

Robots could be useful tools tohelp children learn - not to replaceschool or teachers, but in additionto these in order to provide comple-mentary, and potentially more indi-vidualised, learning opportunities.We have a number of years of expe-rience working with teachers, chil-dren, and their parents trying todevelop the necessary technologyand understanding to find out howsuch robots could be genuinely use-

ful. We do so by (typically) bringing our robots (such as those pictured) toa school, and learning from having the children engage in various activitieswith them.

Primarily for teachers and parents, the purpose of this and future newslettersis to show you what we’ve been up to (e.g. school visits, events, etc), and toprovide updates on our progress. If you are (and your school is) interested intaking part, then please do contact us, and we will include you in our futureactivities.

Summer Scientist 2017

In August 2017, we conducted astudy with over 90 children (aged 3to 10) who visited the University ofLincoln to take part in the SummerScientist event.

A collaboration between theSchools of Psychology and Com-puter Science, we were interestedin how children can tell the dif-ference between real and pretendcharacters in stories told by a robot(pictured right). Having a betteridea of how children of different ages respond to the robot in this context willhelp us further work on robots to help children with learning outcomes, andthose with autism spectrum disorders with cognitive and social skill practice.Stay tuned for the results!

Future events: come and see the L-CAS robots at the LiGHTS festival at theUniversity of Lincoln on Friday the 29th of September.

** Please note that links are embedded within this document - please use the electronic version ofthis newsletter.