ScienceNews shares recent developments in educational robots, saying that children will chat with, listen to, and otherwise treat robots as sentient, social beings. Although these robots aren’t intended to replace human teachers, these educational robots are potentially able to provide students with one-on-one attention that could be especially crucial to students with special needs or different learning capabilities.

While these robots are already becoming popular in China and Japan, the U.S. is still in the experimental phase. Many researchers across the nation are at work developing and testing educational robots.

ScienceNews describes Minnie, a robot designed by Michaelis and roboticist Bilge Mutlu to make schoolwork fun and support children’s reading at home. Minnie comments on a book as the child reads aloud, shows emotional responses to stories, and summarizes plot points to support reading comprehension.

The team randomly assigned 24 students ages 10 to 12 to either two weeks of reading aloud by themselves or with Minnie. Based on the students’ reviews of the activity, they concluded that the students working with Minnie were more motivated to read than those who weren’t.

The ScienceNews report explains that researchers hope to deepen the exploration into educational robots, by exploring their sociality, and expanding experimental programs from a few weeks to a full academic year. ScienceNews notes that, despite the unanswered questions in the world of educational robots, it is likely that the future of education will include robots in the classroom.

Read the full ScienceNews article here.