Preschool teachers did a sport exercises with Robotis DarWin OP2

On November 14, Liliya Gavrilova, an employee of the Laboratory of intelligent robotic systems (LIRS), and Arina Kotik, a 3rd-year student of the Higher Institute of Information technologies and intelligent systems of KFU, took part in an open event for kindergarten teachers, which was held in the kindergarten No. 188 of combined type with Tatar language education and training.

The purpose of the event was to discuss communicative approaches in the interaction of parents and preschool educational institutions as a condition for professional competence of teachers. Using the example of an experiment with a robot, implemented jointly with the LIRS in the kindergarten, teacher Natalia Levina described in detail the stages of preparation and interaction of the experimental team with parents.

Let us remind that in the spring of this year, the two-week series of English classes with preschool children was held in the Republic of Tatarstan for the first time. The peculiarity of the classes was the use of an anthropomorphic robot Robotis DarWin OP2, which was a teacher's assistant. With its help, children learned numerals and new vocabulary, played games, did exercises and memorized small numbers. The results of the analysis of the data obtained during the pilot experiments were presented by the LIRS team in the article "Pilot Study of Teaching English for Pre-School Children with a Small-Size Humanoid Robot Assistant", which received the Best Student Paper Award at the 12th international conference "IEEE Developments in eSystems Engineering 2019".

At the end of this event, the kindergarten teachers had a surprise – a personal acquaintance with the robot DarWin OP-2, which conduct sport exercises in English language with the participants. The robot made a great impression on the audience. Thus, LIRS contributes to the robotization and digitalization of education, which, in accordance with the global trends, should begin with preschool age in the conditions of constant increase in requirements for students.