The paper “Alpha Mini as a Learning Partner in the Classroom” by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and Andrin Allemann was accepted at ICSR 2023. The philosopher of technology and information systems specialist has been researching conversational agents for a quarter of a century, and for many years specifically on embodied conversational agents and social robots. Andrin Allemann developed a learning application for children as part of his final thesis at the FHNW School of Business, supervised by Oliver Bendel. The goal was to create one with a low-cost social robot that has the same motor skills as NAO and the same knowledge transfer capabilities as Pepper (which is equipped with a display). The choice fell on the small Alpha Mini from Ubtech. It was possible, with some technical effort, to pair it with an external device, a Microsoft Surface. This runs an educational game suitable for primary school teaching. ICSR 2023 will take place in Qatar in December 2023. Along with Robophilosophy, it is one of the most important conferences for social robotics worldwide.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
