Projects

In this project we study human–robot interaction (HRI). We focus particularly on child-robot interaction (CRI) in foreign language or second language, in school context. Our objective is to study how verbal and multimodal interaction takes place between humans and robots. We are interested in how children respond verbally and emotionally to robots in language learning situations as well as what kind of problem-solving situations children have in communicating with robots. In learning situations, the role of the teacher changes to a facilitator or a mediator in the communication.

A social robot is an autonomous or semi-autonomous robot that communicates and interacts with human beings according to certain communicative practices that are familiar in given socio-cultural context. Interactive situations involving social robots are multimodal, as the robots can be programmed to use both verbal and nonverbal means of communication, such as movements, gestures, and gazes.

See “Telepresence robot mediated embodied interaction in hybrid language learning environments” in “Funded projects” here

Liisa Peura is a PhD student at the Department of French at the University of Turku. Her main interest is in interaction and FL learning in school contexts – child-robot interaction and new creative pedagogical designs, affective reactions to RALL and willingness to communicate. She has worked as a French teacher developing language learning in Espoo for quite some time already and now her inspiration is to bridge pragmatism and research through language learning at school.