A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests teaching robots how to play a video game can help children with developmental or physical challenges improve their motor and coordination skills.
In the study, teachers had kids teach small robots how to play the game Angry Birds, according to CNET. The kids were asks to teach both adults and robots, and were shown to be three times more interested in teaching the robots how to play the game than when they were teaching adults. They made eye contact with the robot 40 percent of the time, as opposed to only 7 percent of the time with adults.
Ayanna Howard, Motorola Foundation professor in the School of Electrical and Computer engineering and leader of the project, said kids can get bored while repeatedly touching and swiping a tablet to improve their hand-coordination movements.
"But if a robot friend needs help with the game, the child is more likely to take the time to teach it, even if it requires repeating the same instructions over and over again," Howard said. "The person's desire to help their 'friend' can turn a 5-minute, bland exercise into a 30-minute session they enjoy."
The robots were also shown to benefit from the study, Science Codex reported. The robots watched the kids play the game, recording "snapshots" in their memory. While a kid would drag his/her finger to move the bird across the screen, the robots watched where the fingers started and stopped, as well as how the objects on the screen moved with each other. The machine kept track of these activities while keeping score.
When the robots were given the game, they copied the movements of the kids while playing. The machine shook its head when the bird was a dud, but when it won, its eyes lit up while it danced and played a happy song to celebrate.
The researchers believe the study helps in finding ways to have robots function in society, Science Codex reported.
"One way to get robots more quickly into society is to design them to be flexible for end users," said Hae Won Park, postdoctoral fellow of Howard's who is working on the project. "If a robot is only trained to perform a specific set of tasks and not able to learn and adapt to its owner or surroundings, its usefulness can become extremely limited."
Howard and Park believe flexibility will help them program robots to help kids finish specific sets of tasks while also adapting to the kid's behaviors, CNET reported.
The research team is now looking to use the robots for a similar experiment involving kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The team will observe the therapeutic effect that teaching the robots to play Candy Crush, Zyrosky, and other games can have on the children.
