Socially Sustainable HRI for Underrepresented Communities: Case Study of Language Learning of Arab Children in Israel

Social robots have predominantly been deployed in resource-rich environments and managed by technical research teams. We propose a socially sustainable framework for deploying social robots in underrepresented, under-resourced communities. This approach emphasizes population-specific social impact, affordable robotic platforms, and “programming“ and operation by local community members. We present a holistic and sociallyecological case study of a unique population: Arabic elementary school children in Israel who face specific linguistic challenges. Learning Hebrew as a second language is crucial for their future, but teaching resources are limited. We developed a unique curriculum designed to teach bilingual morphological awareness in a fun and engaging way, implementing it through social robotic platforms. These platforms were selected based on social sustainability criteria, including affordability, lack of required programming skills by educators, and ease of deployment in schools. In two long-term, in-the-wild studies conducted at two different elementary schools (N=135, N=87), we utilized first Patricc and then Valera, both open-source, 3D-printed robots. These robots were “programmed“ by a non-technical educator and operated by local teachers. After six activities conducted over several weeks, our results show significant positive learning gains in both Arabic and Hebrew morphological awareness. We discuss the implications of our socially sustainable framework for using social robots in underrepresented and under-resourced communities.