MobiAxis: An Embodied Learning Task for Teaching Multiplication with a Social Robot

Abstract: The use of robots in educational settings is growing increasingly popular. Yet, many of the learning tasks involving social robots do not take full advantage of their physical embodiment. MobiAxis is a proposed learning task which uses the physical capabilities of a Pepper robot to teach the concepts of positive and negative multiplication along a number line. The robot is embodied with a number of multi-modal socially intelligent features and behaviours which are designed to enhance learning. This paper is a position paper describing the technical and theoretical implementation of the task, as well as proposed directions for future studies.