Overview
The approach to early education has remained largely the same for decades, but CES® Eureka Park™ exhibitor and CTA member ROYBI is changing the game — personalizing learning with a robot tutor that teaches through play.
As teachers and parents search for new ways to cultivate curiosity and encourage learning for young children, the ROYBI Robot presents an innovative solution.
The robot is an artificial intelligence-powered friend designed to help kids ages 3 through 7 learn personalized language and STEM skills.
“With all the technology advances we have today, there’s not much effort into early childhood education,” said Elnaz Sarraf, founder and CEO of ROYBI. “And that’s why we started ROYBI.”
Prepping the Next Generation
Just like a teacher, ROYBI Robot — which was named one of TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of 2019 — can talk one-on-one with young children and help them with vocabulary, pacing its lessons and adjusting content through machine learning to best fit the child’s needs.
“We are starting with language because it is the building block of other skills that kids can learn down the road,” Sarraf said.
The pill-shaped friend, which has bright, changeable headwear that kids can switch out, understands emotions through facial recognition technology, and even uses voice recognition to detect and respond accordingly to different children.
Through artificial intelligence, ROYBI Robot benchmarks each child’s learning progress with scientific research to best adjust learning materials. Parents can use the ROYBI app to pause or replay lessons and check their child’s progress.
A CES veteran, ROYBI returned to CES 2020 to showcase the educational companion and speak more about privacy and data protection in technology as well.
“We hope to change [data sensitivity] by getting more trust from our users and then gradually even teachers and government entities to know what our mission is to impact education,” Sarraf said.
ROYBI for Change
Looking ahead, Sarraf and the ROYBI team are excited to launch the ROYBI Robot in different regions across the world and helping improve education in developing countries.
Curricula and new, curated lessons can be stored in the cloud for the ROYBI Robots regardless of their location, providing new opportunities for less well-equipped classrooms.
“I’m very excited to make education accessible to any child regardless of where they live, regardless of their family income status,” Sarraf said.
Listen to Sarraf speak more about technology in education on the CES Tech Talk podcast.