Recently, education game contents with advanced mobile and Web technology have been widely researched. However, considering of interaction involved for children, it is necessary user friendly interfaces and interesting interactions. In addition, it is important to design to encourage the user’s learning motivation as a way to the effect of educational game contents. Therefore, in this study, we designed and implemented the educational game contents system using inter-working between KINECT camera, PC, and android platform based humanoid robot. The designed system consisted of KINECT system for capturing hand gestures, game contents system for playing games, and android humanoid robot system for interacting with users. This system can lead to interests and willingness of users through handy interaction such as hand gestures and interesting quiz game contents. To improve effectiveness and userability, we plant to advance designed educational game contents system that can be operated on a smart TV system including a built-in camera as a further study.
The purpose of this study was to investigate how young children recognize the image of robots, and how they understand the relationship between themselves and robots based on school experience. 20 children from kindergarten A had no direct experience with educational robots, whereas 20 children from kindergarten B had experience in using educational robots in their classroom. Total 40 children from age group 5 class participated in this study. We collected data using interview and drawing test. The findings of the study are as follows: First, participating children recognized robots as having both the character of a machine and a human. But children with previous robot experience provided description of robots as a machine-tool. Both groups were not able to explain the structure of robots in details. Second, participating children understood that they can develop a range of social relationships with robots, including simple help to family replacement. There were mixed views on robots among the children with previous experience, but children with no experience described robots as taking the role of peers or family members. These findings could contribute to the development of robots and related programs in the field of early childhood education.
This paper deals with researching and designing the fastening parts to be used in order to assemble various Teaching Aids Robots (or Hands-on Robots) with originally incompatible parts supplied by different manufacturers. The suggested fastening parts provide the compatibility among Teaching Aids Robots even though the educational robot customers use incompatible parts from different companies. The designed fastening parts are classified into four set groups such as frame set, sliding-bar set, connector set, and set of chuck and rivet/bolt. Each set of the fastening parts reflects the needs collected from the users, and then some portion of new idea has been added to implement the needs. In this paper, the examples of the Teaching Aids Robots which are assembled with both commercial parts and the designed parts are presented in order to evaluate the compatibility and usability of the suggested fastening parts. As a result, both compatibility and usability of the fastening parts suggested in this paper were proved. The designed fastening parts have been distributed to more than 100 elementary schools nationwide.