Smart Learning Institute

Haijun Zeng, Associate Dean of SLIBNU

The white paper analyzes the research hotspots of educational robots in the past five years, summing up the 17 roles and 12 application scenarios of educational robots, thus proposes a product analysis framework of 4 dimensions and 5 levels, and obtains 9 types of people from 7 categories of perspectives. The demand for educational robots summarizes three of the key technologies and mainstream design ideas and organizes a seven-layer industrial chain framework. It is estimated that the educational robot market model will reach $84.1 billion by 2023.

Through literature research, the white paper ranks the top 10 educational robot research institutions in the world. According to the results of keyword cluster analysis, the main areas of educational robot research and the five hotspots of research are drawn.

In order to understand the distribution status of current market products, the white paper proposes “applicable object” and “application field”, and proposes an analysis framework from the perspective of product and user relationship to explain the current development of the market. It can be seen that educational robot products are mainly used in home and school fields, and some products are still in the conceptual stage, such as classroom robot "Teaching Assistant" and robot "Teacher".

12 Types of Application Scenarios for Educational Robot Products

The white paper also proposes four dimensions including “expressional movement”, “perceptional input”, “robotic intelligence” and “social interaction” and the analysis framework of products with five levels of functions.

The Analysis Framework of Educational Robot Product

On the basis of market and product analysis, the white paper obtained the needs of educational robots from 9 categories of people and 7 categories of perspectives, and summarized 233 items of demand. With literature research, regarding the maturity of the three key technologies, which include human-computer interaction technology, robot vision technology, and context sensing technology, as a requirement for the definition of time-course requirements, the white paper also summarized the typical needs and implementation time of each group.

Demand and Implementation Time of Educational Robots for Various User Groups

Compared with industrial robots, educational robots are more complicated in form, composition and function. Combined with shorter development time, the robots are still in the early stage of exploration. The white paper proposes a seven-layer industrial chain for educational robots: AI chip makers, hardware manufacturers, system platform developers, application service providers, content providers, system integrators, and channel vendors. The enterprises in the 7-layer industrial chain are not strictly upstream and downstream, and some enterprises have multiple roles at the same time.

The Framework of the Industry Chain for Educational Robot

1. Statistics showed that the United States and Europe (English, French, Italian) are the main areas of academic research on educational robots. The research focuses on the five aspects: the ontology, teaching role and influence, teaching practice, design as well as application scenarios of educational robots. The value of STEAM, language education, treatment of physical and mental disorders, and the development of students' abilities have received more attention from academic circles.
 
2. The diversity of educational users determines the need for educational robots to be broad and varied. From the perspective of the application field, the demand for family is obviously more than the demand for school; from the perspective of functional utility, the demand for language education and robot education is relatively larger; from the perspective of applicable object, the demands for students are more than demands for other groups.
 
3. The design of educational robots should be based on demand analysis, with intelligence as the focus, not only to meet users' subjective needs so as to strengthen the natural human-computer interaction experience, but also to maintain rational judgment on users’ needs.
 
4. Human-computer interaction, machine vision and situational awareness are the three key technologies that need to be developed vigorously in educational robot research; the combination of educational robotic local intelligence and cloud intelligent design will provide new ideas for improving perception and interaction capabilities. In addition, educational robots should develop more educational applicability to improve the competence of educational services.
 
5. The terminal consumer market for educational robots is expanding rapidly, and the educational robot industry will usher in a period of rapid development. The idea of ​​R&D and promotion of special-purpose products has gradually formed and will become the blue ocean market of system integrators; the segmentation field is expected to become the main development direction of the future educational robot market.
 
6. The educational robot market will form a service ecosystem circle. Similar to the development of smartphones, the educational robot operating system and open SDK or API services will attract software developers to form a complete service system from hardware integration to software development and various teaching services.

 

Scan the QR Code to download the summary version of Educational Robots White Paper 2019: The Global Development.