NRI: INT: COLLAB: Development, Deployment and Evaluation of Personalized Learning Companion Robots for Early Literacy and Language Learning

这个国家机器人倡议项目将开发、部署和评估个性化的同伴机器人，帮助幼儿园适龄儿童学习语言和词汇技能。其目的是加速社交机器人对学校和家庭早期教育的影响。这个为期四年的项目将在三个关键领域推进知识：(1)面向幼儿的自动语音识别模型；(2)早期语言和识字技能的多模式学生评估算法；(3)活动、内容和对话式问题生成的个性化，以提高学习结果。该项目将为如何开发具有表现力、对社会做出反应的机器人提供新的见解，为幼儿提供更有效、更吸引人和更具同理心的教育体验。为了评估长期互动对教育成果的影响，项目团队将对幼儿园教室进行为期4个月的研究，并进行为期3个月的在家研究。该项目将促使教师和家长为在课堂和家庭环境中使用社交机器人的最佳实践制定关键指导方针，参与的本科生和研究生将接受社交机器人、语音识别和理解、人类参与研究、用于自动评估和个性化工具的交互式机器学习以及早期教育研究等多学科方面的培训。该研究和开发项目将分两个阶段实施：最初阶段包括短期试点部署，以培训和不断迭代开发项目技术和系统；然后长期部署机器人，以检查学校和家庭教育环境中与社交机器人的自主交互。在单个组件(自动阅读和语言评估工具、自动问题生成算法、自动语音识别和口语理解系统模型，以及与自主社交机器人学习伙伴的活动)的开发阶段，项目组将收集和分析数据，并采用实用和性能衡量标准，并改进和迭代正在开发的系统的每个组件。在个别组件开发完成后，通过与孩子们的反复迭代，将开发出自主社交机器人讲故事同伴。在项目的最后一年，将在六个幼稚园教室进行两个为期四个月的学习，每个教室有15至20名学生。该项目预计将取得五项主要成果：(1)开发幼儿语音的自动语音识别和口语理解系统；(2)幼儿园儿童口语和早期阅读技能的多模式自动评估算法；(3)针对幼儿口头讲故事的故事内容定制和对话问题生成的自动个性化算法；(4)开发一个具有有效教育活动的完全自主、协作、类似同行的社交机器人系统；以及(5)历时数月在学校和家庭部署社交机器人的长期研究，展示持续参与和积极的学习成果。

This National Robotics Initiative project will develop, deploy and evaluate personalized companion robots to assist kindergarten-age children in learning language and vocabulary skills. The aim is to accelerate the impacts of social robots for early education in schools and at home. The four-year project will advance knowledge in three key areas: (1) automatic speech recognition models for young children; (2) multi-modal student assessment algorithms for early language and literacy skills; and (3) personalization of activities, content, and dialogic question generation to boost learning outcomes. The project will generate new insights for how to develop expressive, socially responsive robots that provide more effective, engaging, and empathetic educational experiences for young children. To evaluate the impacts of long-term interactions on educational outcomes, the project team will conduct a 4-month study with Kindergarten classrooms, as well as a 3-month at-home study. The project will engage teachers and parents to develop key guidelines for best practices for use of social robots in classroom and home settings, and participating undergraduate and graduate students will be trained in the multidisciplinary aspects of social robotics, speech recognition and understanding, human participation studies, interactive machine learning for automatic assessment and personalization tools, and early education research.This research and development project will be implemented in two phases: An initial phase consisting of short pilot deployments to train and continually iterate development of project technologies and systems, followed by longer term deployment of the robot to examine autonomous interactions with social robots in school and home educational settings. During the development stage of individual components (automatic reading and language assessment tools, automatic question-generation algorithm, automatic speech recognition and spoken language understanding system models, and activities with the autonomous social robot learning companion) the project team will collect and analyze data with practical and performance measures, and refine and iterate each component of the system being developed. After development of the individual components, the autonomous social robot storytelling companion will be developed through repeated iterations with children. In the final year of the project, two 4-month studies will be conducted in six Kindergarten classrooms with 15 to 20 students each. This project is expected to result in five key contributions: (1) Development of Automatic Speech Recognition and Spoken Language Understanding systems for young children's speech, (2) Multi-modal automatic assessment algorithms for Kindergarten age children's spoken language and early reading skills; (3) Automatic personalization algorithms for story content customization and dialogic question generation in the context of young children's verbal storytelling; (4) Development of a fully autonomous, collaborative, peer-like social robot system with effective educational activities; and (5) Long-term studies with deployed social robots in schools and homes spanning several months and demonstrating sustained engagement and positive learning outcomes.