This study introduces the educational assistant robots that we developed for foreign language learning and explores the effectiveness of robot-assisted language learning (RALL) which is in its early stages. To achieve this purpose, a course was designed in which students have meaningful interactions with intelligent robots in an immersive environment. A total of 24 elementary students, ranging in age from ten to twelve, were enrolled in English lessons. A pretest/post-test design was used to investigate the cognitive effects of the RALL approach on the students' oral skills. No significant difference in the listening skill was found, but the speaking skills improved with a large effect size at the significance level of 0.01. Descriptive statistics and the pre-test/post-test design were used to investigate the affective effects of RALL approach. The result showed that RALL promoted and improved students' satisfaction, interest, confidence, and motivation at the significance level of 0.01.

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This paper discusses the development of the multi-functional indoor service robot PSR (Public Service Robots) systems. We have built three versions of PSR systems, which are the mobile manipulator PSR-1 and PSR-2, and the guide robot Jinny. The PSR robots successfully accomplished four target service tasks including a delivery, a patrol, a guide, and a floor cleaning task. These applications were defined from our investigation on service requirements of various indoor public environments. This paper shows how mobile-manipulator typed service robots were developed towards intelligent agents in a real environment. We identified system integration, multi-functionality, and autonomy considering environmental uncertainties as key research issues. Our research focused on solving these issues, and the solutions can be considered as the distinct features of our systems. Several key technologies were developed to satisfy technological consistency through the proposed integration scheme.

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