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Materials Today: Proceedings

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A review on the use of socially assistive robots in education and elderly

care
L.B. Thamil Amudhu
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The emergence of Artificial intelligence over the last decade had never excluded any one of the domains
Received 12 September 2020 in our daily life. In that socially Assisted Robots (SARs) are indispensable in our activities in future. SARs
Accepted 25 September 2020 are one which assists the humans through its behaviour of social interactions, caring and services rather
Available online xxxx
than performing mechanical tasks. Robots are highly dominated in the field of military, space, hospital
and banking applications. This article illustrates utilize of SARs in the education for lower level classes
Keywords: and assistance to the old age people. These are the two major areas where serious development to be
Socially assisted robots
taken globally because of the population increases. In current scenario, SARs have the promising contri-
Social interactions
Humanoid robot
butions in both the classroom teachings and assistance to elders. This research reviews the most recent
Educational robots year’s major development in the education system and elderly care. It consolidates the limitation and
Elderly care needs of social robots at present. Socially Assisted Robots have potential to make our lives more sophis-
Assistance for elders ticated in future. This review paper also suggests the future research and scope of these robots.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
ence on Advances in Materials Research – 2019.

1. Introduction
The Socially Assistive Robot is one of the types of Robotics and
an emerging technology in recent times. These were first appeared
in 1950 s with basic performance of mechanisms. In 1990 s, the
developments of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have turned the
researchers towards the implementation of AI in social robots.
They have developed the space robot (drones), surgical robots, mil-
itary robots, spy robots, entertainment robots and undersea robots
for their specific applications such as surveillance, exploration,
medicinal and entertainment purposes respectively. They were so
many researchers were conducted and published over the last dec-
ade on these fields.
SARs have necessarily not to be humanoid; it may be either
semi humanoid or non-humanoid. It interacts with human and
become a good companion. User inabilities can be assisted by
social robots. Its aim is to support and enhance the human activi-
ties in their major heavy tasks. It is designed to achieve the
human’s different domains of life. SARs are entirely different from
the industrial robots because industrial robots are programmed to
E-mail address: thamil18008@mech.ssn.edu.in
work in given environment for all time and there is no interaction
between human and robot in it.
So that socially assisted robots are introduced to take care, do
domestic tasks, perform human tasks or replace the human,
improve education system and assist the health care measures.
This article focuses how the SARs were teaching in the classrooms,
assisting and taking care of the adult people. They were very lim-
ited researchers done in the socially assisted robots in the recent
times. So that major recent researches on education system and
elder care by using SARs have reviewed below.
2. Educational robotics
The use of robots to the education benefits us in many ways.
The Socially Assistive Robot have explored and delivered many
notable things in the domain of education. The major significant
researches dealt with social interactions, behaviour and relation-
ships with human are reviewed. Hashimoto et al. [1] proposed an
Android Robot SAYA and used as a Teacher for the remote class
system. It was allowed to interact with students and its behaviours
were operated by the operator at one end and the operator could
also observe the students also. The proposed SAR had facial expres-
sions and head and hand movements. This education system moti-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.602
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials Research – 2019.

Please cite this article as: L.B. Thamil Amudhu, A review on the use of socially assistive robots in education and elderly care, Materials Today: Proceedings,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.602
L.B. Thamil Amudhu
vated the elementary school students to learn science classes and
attended the classes actively. The development of the robot SAYA
achieved the purpose of the creation and enhanced the educational
system. Edwards and Cheok [2] described the future classroom
with SAR and developed the design for a robot teacher. They were
very much concerned about the future education system develop-
ment. They have suggested the robot teachers were very much clo-
ser than predicted and they provided the significances and
consequences of the SARs. They have estimated the 45 years from
2016 (i.e., 2062) that SARs can do all human jobs and they repre-
sented it as the milestones of achievements in AI in their findings
shown in Fig. 1. They have very well planned the future education
system in their work and insisted to prepare for the developments
of SARs. Toh et al. [3] examined the use of robots in the low level
education. As those children’s behaviour were studied and anal-
ysed by the influence of robots. And mainly the use of SARs were
highly improved the skills of children. This technique was engaged
the children’s to learn and explore the sciences and being interac-
tive in the classrooms. The observance of children’s behaviour
around the SARs and interactions with it were estimated using
RGB Cameras and sensor network by Komatsubara et al. [4] suc-
cessfully. They have reported that children’s social status with
71.4% accuracy in an elementary school.
Erich et al. [5] reviewed the humanoid robot applied with social
experiments. They have analysed the previously used robots for
various applications and its framework and declared that the most
use the robot NAO for all applications such as teaching, assisting,
playing, interacting and its behaviour towards the human interac-
tions were also reported clearly. Design of robot’s software frame-
work was suggested by them successfully. Fernandez-Llamas et al.
[6] were experimented by using robot for K-12 students and com-
pared human teacher with robot. Then they explained the stu-
dent’s attitude towards robot. And they concluded the differences
among the human and robot teacher group.
Kanda et al. [7] conducted a two month interaction of robot
with elementary school students and found that students devel-
oped a long term friendly relationship with the robots. It showed
that one of the important qualities that robot can participate in
our daily lives. Students-Robot interactions were recorded and
analysis given a better results. A field trial for 2 weeks using SARs
as English tutor with elementary school students for their
improvement of English Language were performed Kanda et al.
[8]. They have monitored the humanoid robots relationship with
the students and suggested that SAR will acquire us in our daily
lives in immediate future. They provided a platform for researchers
to build on by highlighting the expected outcomes of using robots
to deliver education and by suggesting directions for future
research. Belpaeme et al. [9] reviewed all the aspects of social
robot’s role in the education and refined the challenges and consid-
Fig 1. Milestones of achievements in AI predicted 45 years from 2016 (Edwards
et al. [2]).
2
Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
erations of the SARs and concluded that SARs have potential to give
a better education in future.
3. Assistance for elders care
SARs are involved in the care of the elder to overcome their
inabilities and acts as a perfect companion. They could assist them
in their loneliness and makes them much better than before. There
are several research were conducted and experimented in the
domain of elderly care, which could also resulted them positive.
The experiment conducted by Karunarathne et al. [10] that
study about older people accept a humanoid robot as a walking
partner and could have benefited from their experiment and
showed that the older people felt motivated, happy and enjoying
walking with robot. Bedaf et al. [11] resulted that the elders were
accepted robots as their companion rather than human carer.
Theirs’ personal interest was on SARs than relatives and friends.
These significant result addressed that the development of social
behaviour of the SARs were highly smart and to be irreplaceable
in future. The impact of population ageing, demand for the care
of elders and challenges in the acceptance of SARs were reviewed
effectively by Flandorfer [12]. This article clearly mentioned the
difference of technology acceptance and robot acceptance. Engag-
ing the older adults in dance based exercise that motivated them
to higher level by Chen et al. [13]. Robot was successfully engaged
as dance partner to the older adults and made them pleasant and
enjoyable.
Fattal et al. [14] created a SAR and named it as SAM which is
used for the quadriplegia affected elder persons. They have con-
ducted assessments in the patients who have high level quadriple-
gia and various parameters were measured. They resulted that
patients were accepted SAM in their daily lives activities. Mitzner
et al. [15] identified the potentials for SAR’s to assist in the differ-
ent living environments and reviewed the user’s need and accep-
tance rate of SARs in their lives. They concluded that SARs had
provided the quality of care to the elders. Moro et al. [16] described
the facial expressions, arm gestures and social intelligences during
the interactions and found that the quality of interactions
between the older persons and robot. They tabulated the corre-
sponding behaviours obtained from the video data in the Table 1.
Parviainen et al [17] analysed how the elders’ opinion on the
robot assistance on their work and suggested the idea that touch-
ing and presence were crucial for the elderly care. Portugal et al.
[18] provided an interactive robot for supporting the daily routines
of the elderly people. They addressed the major concern in the
elder’s security, safety and lifestyle. The review of the importance
of assistive robots in disability persons lives described that how to
Table 1
Measured variables obtained from video data (Moro et al. [16]).
S. Measured Corresponding behaviours
No variable
1 Engagement Visual focus of attention (gaze direction and length
of time)
2 Trust Asks or turns toward the platform for
help/explanations
3 Positive affect Smiles, laughs
4 Negative affect Grimaces, frowns, shows restlessness
5 Perceived social Social cues toward the platform (asking the
intelligence platform: ‘‘Do you like tea?”, thanking it, using its
name)Backchannels (e.g. head nods, linguistic cues
such as ‘‘uh-huh”, ‘‘okay”)
6 Collaborative Status updates (e.g. ‘‘The water is boiling”, or ‘‘I put
behaviour the teabag in the cup”)Questions toward the
platform (e.g. asking: ‘‘What’s next?” or ‘‘What do I
do now?”)
7 Compliance Ratio of prompts complied with over total number
of prompts given
L.B. Thamil Amudhu
make the elders independence to do their work and improve their
mental ability [19]. Balaguer et al. [20] developed a MATS robot for
doing task such as shaving, eating and etc. to elderly peoples home.
The efficiency of the robot was higher and everyone was accepting
as a companion.
4. Discussions
The overview of the study mainly focuses on the development
of SARs in the educational field and elderly care. These are the
above reviews were noticeable in the growth of SARs and given
the importance to older peoples to live independently and also
enhanced the teaching methods respectively. The elder people
were motivated and to live their life with assistive robot for longer
time. They have been enjoying with these technologies and not to
depend on anyone. This improves their quality of life. As the age
brings inabilities but the SARs give assistance and stays as positive
at the older ages. Using SARs in education develops more creation
and innovation among students. By the influence of the technolo-
gies, we can achieve many things. Due to the population increases,
the care to the elders and teachers for the student should be bal-
anced with the help of SARs. As of now, many rich countries are
only researching on SARs, this could be a concern for the develop-
ing countries. Although SARs is an emerging field in robotics, it will
enlighten our life. The many students find benefits of using SARs
and the growths of technologies are higher. The future scope in
the field SARs in education will deal the teaching of different sub-
jects such as mathematics and science etc. SARs are majorly
involved in the lower class education; this will be extended more
to higher education. SARs Projects are more concentrated on the
research oriented than the practical applications. The interaction
of SARs with human can be developed more efficiently and will
engage the classrooms as a great educational tool. However in
the elderly care, SARs are already made its mark and it will be
focused on design and mechanism to do their task effectively.
The interactions between robot and elder could be improved for
better outcomes. The facial expressions and gestures of the robot
should be developed for the elderly care. The feedback system
could be installed to SARs for improving the older person’s life
for longer. SARs are already contributed highly for the both areas
and also continue to do in future.
5. Conclusions
The main intend of the review is to focus on the social interac-
tions of the socially assistive robot in the education and elderly
care. SARs are highly emerging in the recent years and this will
be the future solution for various domains. The findings from the
review clearly suggest the SARs will play a vital role in all our lives.
By 2050, SARs will be featured in every classroom and will be main
aid for teaching. In elderly care, ageing of persons definitely needs
more assistance and SARs will be the preferences for their compan-
ion. So that SARs will likely feature in all our home and it will be
irreplaceable and understandable one in our lives.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
L.B. Thamil Amudhu: Investigation, Visualization, Writing -
original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
Declaration of Competing Interest
The author declares that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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