MAPLE: A Multi-Agent, Prosocial Learning Environment, Engaging and Motivating Children

Social-robot peers provide new opportunities and benefits for children's education that robot tutors and learning tools cannot. One such opportunity is peer collaboration, which can improve cognitive and affective learning outcomes. We explore this opportunity with a non-humanoid collaborative robot system that we call “MAPLE,” a Multi-Agent Prosocial Learning Environment. In MAPLE, our robot, “Maple,” physically acts on its environment and coordinates its behaviors with children to complete a task that is both synchronous and collaborative. Findings from a preliminary interaction study involving 17 children suggest that perceived collaboration with a robot can positively influence children's engagement and motivation, particularly in contexts where collaboration is encouraged but not explicitly required. This work offers compelling insights for advancing child-robot collaboration.