Analysis on Children's Tolerance to Weak Recognition of Storytelling Robots

Abstract

A number of studies on teaching assistant robots (or peer tutoring robots) have proven that robots can be considered effective tools for language education. Interactive storytelling, in particular, can be used for enhancing the teaching of English as a foreign language. This can be used in robot aided learning of English. However, the biggest obstacle to the interaction between human beings and robots in field studies is the robots’ low-success rate of face and voice recognition. This causes some children to utterly give up interaction with robots or to just ignore them altogether. This paper explores robot storytelling elements to look at ways of generating and maintaining interaction between teaching assistant robots and children. Robot storytelling about the robot’s own weak recognition was examined to see if it could address the challenge of changing children’s attitudes and maintain interaction between the children and the robot. It was concluded that teaching assistant robot storytelling is effective in increasing children’s tolerance towards robot weak recognition.