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Roybi is the first and only AI-powered, language teaching and companion robot tailored to children aged 3 to 7 years old. Below is our recent interview with Elnaz Sarraf, the Founder and CEO at Roybi Robot:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Roybi Robot?
A: Recent scientific advances have resulted in a proliferation of technological teaching tools for languages, such as screen-based content delivery and robot-facilitated tutoring. These tools and techniques have been shown through research studies to be effective means by which young children can learn vocabulary and literacy skills. What sets Roybi apart from these other language learning tools and apps is that Roybi’s platform is firmly grounded not only in cognitive development but also in social-pragmatic, interactive principles of children’s learning. Through the lens of this multidisciplinary framework, Roybi promotes active language learning beyond vocabulary and phrases toward developing meaningful, ecologically-valid communication skills. By drawing from large naturalistic datasets of children’s language learning, Roybi can create lessons reflecting the natural ways children learn. Based on this age-normed language data from a variety of languages and across multiple contexts and naturalistic settings, Roybi provides developmentally-based input to children, tracking their progress along the way.
Q: You’ve recently announced partnership with United Innovations Services; could you tell us something more?
A: United Innovation Services’ (UIS) Tianfu New Area Innovation Center is supported by China’s Chengdu Management Committee of the Tianfu New Area. UIS opened it’s U.S. branch in 2017 here in Silicon Valley through partnership with GSVlabs. With over 2 decades worth of experience in operating technology parks, incubators and accelerators across Mainland China, UIS is excited to collaborate with Roybi in helping us to bring our business to the Chinese market. United Innovation Services will guide Roybi through common obstacles that is often faced by companies looking to expand into China such as the registration of the business, the development of a local team, patent applications as well as other legal and financial services. With the support of United Innovation Services from the local Chinese government, UIS will represent Roybi during the application for government incentives and negotiate the terms and conditions on behalf of Roybi in addition to the negotiation of investments from government and investment firms.
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Q: How do you see Roybi improving children’s lives especially for families living in hardship?
A: The Roybi team is committed to making an impact and ensuring equality in access to our technology. Alongside traditional markets for our robot, we plan to work with government agencies and nonprofits to ensure that families across socio-economic strata will be able to use Roybi. This increased accessibility is a critical component of our company’s values of social justice and educational equality. For families living in poverty, children often have less access to educational resources, leaving them at a disadvantage for school readiness and later academic success. Furthermore, children living in poverty are at higher risk of isolation and stress in their daily lives. As a social companion and conversational partner, Roybi has the potential to be a particularly effective source of socio-emotional as well as academic support, potentially improving children’s educational skills while decreasing the impact of daily stressors. In addition, the design components of Roybi allow for minimal maintenance, as educational content and updates come from the cloud. Our goal is to partner with government and other non-profit agencies to provide additional assistance to schools and family programs serving low-income communities by increasing access to the paid version through scholarships and different types of financial aid. Finally, we believe that Roybi will provide the vital support that children require in situations in which parents and / or educators may be unable to assist in their development.
Q: Tell us more about the technology behind your robots?
A: Through video monitoring and voice detection, Roybi stores data to recognize children’s speech patterns. To analyze children’s language development, we base our measures on common data analysis techniques used in the developmental psycholinguistics literature. Children’s language development will be tracked on an individual as well as normed basis. Children’s data will be stored so that their individual progress can be tracked over time. External comparisons is based on age-matched norms from our linguistic source databases (Data is stored securely on Amazon Web Services).
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Q: What can we expect from you in the future?
A: Over the next few years the goal is to expand the target market to include educational content in STEAM learning such as Science and Mathematics, language development (over 5 languages), IoT, as well as the personal / companion robotics categories for all ages. We envision Roybi to be in as many schools and homes as possible over the next five years, through partnerships with global educational initiatives. We plan to increase access to Roybi’s robot and platform and make multilingual education more accessible to young children, parents, and families across socio-economic and geographical strata.
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