Social Robots for Pedagogical Rehabilitation

Abstract

The use of robots as educational learning tools is quite extensive worldwide, yet it is rather limited in special education. In particular, the use of robots in the field of special education is under skepticism since robots are frequently believed to be expensive with limited capacity. The latter may change with the advent of social robots, which can be used in special education as affordable tools for delivering sophisticated stimuli to children with learning difficulties also due to preexisting conditions. Pilot studies occasionally demonstrate the effectiveness of social robots in specific domains. This chapter overviews the engagement of social robots in special education including the authors' preliminary work in this field; moreover, it discusses their proposal for potential future extensions involving more autonomous (i.e., intelligent) social robots as well as feedback from human brain signals.