Educational Robotics and Dyslexia: Investigating How Reinforcement Learning in Robotics Can Be Used to Help Support Students with Dyslexia

Advances in technology, such as in artificial intelligence (reinforced learning) and robotics, has the potential to help dyslexic people and how they can be supported with their learning. Indeed, it has been shown that students with dyslexia benefit from a support system. This paper will explore the introduction of a humanoid robot as a support assistant to enable a personal aspect as well as have an enhanced impact on the learning experience of the dyslexic student. The amount of people being diagnosed with dyslexia is increasing and the lack of support needs to be addressed to make sure that they get the support that they need to face the challenges of their learning. Limited work has been conducted surrounding the use of a robot with reinforcement learning techniques to help support students with dyslexia. This paper reviews current literature surrounding reinforcement learning and educational robotics. Importantly, it will share the third iteration of a conceptual model for the support assistant robot with reinforcement learning. This model highlights the key areas for reinforcement learning to ensure an effective educational robotic experience. The research for this was conducted by conducting a literature review surrounding reinforcement learning. One finding from this paper was that robots can be useful in supporting students and enhancing their learning also that reinforcement learning is a useful machine learning technique.