Yale leads $10 million effort to build social robots

A Yale-led research team will spend the next five years developing a new breed of sophisticated "socially assistive" robots for helping young children learn to read, appreciate physical fitness, overcome cognitive disabilities, and perform physical exercises. The purpose of the $10 million, federally funded effort, announced April 3, is to create self-adapting machines capable of cultivating long-term interpersonal relationships and assisting pre-school-age children with educational and therapeutic goals. "The big idea is that we're building robots to help kids," said Brian Scassellati, the Yale computer scientist who is leading the intensive, multi-university project. "At the end of five years we'd like to have robots that can guide a child toward long-term educational goals, be customized for the particular needs of that child, and basically grow and develop with the child. We want the robot to be the equivalent of a good personal trainer." The robots would supplement, not replace, human teachers and caregivers, Scassellati said, and would work both with regularly developing children and those with social or cognitive deficits. "What many children really need is individualized attention every day for periods of weeks, months, or years," he said. The interrelated technical, social and pedagogical challenges are daunting.