This paper presents an edutainment robot for young children. The edutainment robot called ‘Mon-e’ has developed by the Central R&D Laboratory at KT. The main services of the Mon-E robot are autonomous moving service, object card and story book telling service and videophone service. The RFID technology was introduced for easy interface to young children. The face of Mon-E robot is mounted with an RFID reader. The RFID tag is pasted on story book and object card. If you approach a book or an object card to the face of Mon-E, the Mon-E robot recognizes the identified code and plays its service. In autonomous moving, if the Mon-E robot meets obstacles, it moves back and turns left or right or half rotation. In videophone service, if young children approach an RFID card to the Mon-E, the Mon-E can make a call to the specific number, which is contained in the RFID card. The developed Mon-E robot has tested in real world environment and is evaluated young children and their parents. In the result of evaluation, the feeling of satisfaction was high to main services of Mon-E robot.

This paper presents the system design and implementation of ‘Mon-e’, the KT’s edutainment robot for young children. We paid our special attention to the computer- illiterate young children, and the provision of the physical and friendly human interface of robots. Specifically, the paper focuses on the video telephony and home monitoring service using the Mon-e robot. RFID cards –based calling makes it possible for the computer-illiterate children to make a phone call to their parents. The SIP and DTMF based remote control of the robot enables the search and track of the children. This experimental development shows the potentialities and values of the convergence service of telecommunication and robotics