Requirements


Background

SOTA is a small, pet-like robot which is capable of recording speech, moving its body parts, and playing sound files. Our research clients are Dr Jenny Gibson from Cambridge University, and Professor Steve Hailes from UCL. Our clients are collaborating with a research team from Cambridge University, conducting research on ways to reduce the ‘word-gap’ - the difference in the number of words young children are exposed to. NTT Data has kindly provided us with the SOTA robot, and we would like to give special thanks to Mr Hiroki Inagaki, who has regularly communicated with us and provided us with assistance throughout the project.


Our Project

  • Through utilising the capabilities of NTT Data’s SOTA robot, we aim to develop a chatbot which can help improve the linguistic skills of children aged 4-5.
  • We are collaborating with a research team from who conduct research on communication between robots and children.
  • SOTA will speak and gesture to the child, giving the child an opportunity to respond.
  • The response of the child determines SOTA’s next action.


Requirement Gathering

In order to gather the requirements for our project, we held a meeting with Professor Steve Hailes and Dr Jenny Gibson. In this meeting, we discussed the purpose of our application and its importance, and we identified the key broad requirements that our clients wanted. These included the reduction of the ‘word-gap’ as previously discussed, as well as improving the linguistic ability of young children through their engagement in interactive stories. We then spoke to our NTT Data client, Mr Hiroki Inagaki, to discuss how to translate these requirements into technical requirements and refer to specific technologies which SOTA would use.


Requirements: MoSCoW

    Must Have:
  • Allow SOTA to use appropriate vocabulary targeted at 4-5 year old children
  • Convert text into speech with an API and use SOTA libraries to play back to the child
  • Accurately transform the child’s speech into text form using a third party API and SOTA libraries
  • Allow SOTA to tell one or more suitable “choose your own adventure” stories which have multiple branches
  • Allow SOTA to answer a range of questions to engage the child
  • Allow the child to ask for word definitions and for SOTA to answer back in the middle of the story
Should Have:
  • Use Natural Language Processing so that the child can respond with any phrase
  • Use a suitable voice which is not too monotonic to tell interesting stories
  • Store user responses in a database accessible by the Cambridge research team
Could Have:
  • Adjust the volume/the pitch of the robot’s voice to effectively tell different parts of the story
  • Allow pronouncing certain words incorrectly, prompting the child’s response
  • Use multi-threading to allow SOTA to speak and move its body at the same time
Would Have:
  • Allow adjusting the activity/conversation based on the child’s ability
  • Record conversation using SOTA’s camera and playback to child



User Consultations


Because we are not allowed to have children participate in the project, the closest we got to a genuine user consultation was a meeting with a child psychology researcher, Dr. Jenny Gibson from University of Cambridge.

She explained that our project would be relevant to because:

  • Hearing as many words as possible is crucial for early development
  • Kids learn much faster through social interaction
  • They are engaged by having to correct mistakes
  • They love repetition
  • Learning through play is a natural mechanism



Considering Alternatives


Ultimately, we decided to use SOTA to communicate with typical children in schools. This is because of the difficulty in getting children with autism to conform to a specific conversation style with SOTA, as well as the difficulty in delivering the robot to a hospital environment.

Idea Positives Negatives
Using SOTA to help children with Autism communicate
  • Can increase their confidence in communication
  • Will encourage them to speak if they are enjoying the activity
  • Children may not respond to SOTA quickly enough
  • Children may not respond with the required response
Using SOTA with children in Great Ormond Street Hospital
  • Will provide company for the sick children
  • Will need to obtain different permissions to go ahead with this
  • May be counterproductive (talking to a robot instead of a human)
Using SOTA to improve the language of usual children
  • Helps children communicate in scenarios similar to real-life
  • Can have a wide target audience by using in schools
  • Hard to keep the conversation alive
  • May not be very productive if children have to take turns to use


Stage Iterations

  1. Initially, the idea was to use SOTA to play word games with one or even more children
  2. After consultation with our clients, we decided that telling stories to children would be more engaging
  3. The idea of engaging more than one child in the same activity was eventually dropped after meeting with NTT Data and understanding that this would be difficult to implement
  4. Having already drawn up a large portion of the user requirements, we returned to that stage again in order to adjust the requirements
  5. We added requirements specific to conversation, such that SOTA will need to adjust the story based on the child’s response, use appropriate vocabulary based on the child’s level and/or answer simple questions about itself.



User Personas

Dennis is a five-year-old boy. He comes from a wealthy and high class background. His linguistic ability is very advanced for his age. He feels like school isn’t challenging enough for him. He would like to experience new and fun ways of challenging his language.

Mary is a four-year-old girl who comes from a middle class family. Her family often complains that she does not understand much of their conversations. She also struggles in English class in her school. She is often shy to get engaged in conversations. Her family hopes that communicating with a robot will encourage her to talk more to other people.



Use Case Diagram



Use Cases

Dennis’ family has purchased SOTA for him to use in his free time at home . Dennis turns on SOTA anticipating it to stretch his linguistic abilities. When SOTA asks him what level he is at (beginner, intermediate or advanced), he replies “advanced.” SOTA begins telling him a story and he notices pronunciation mistakes which he corrects. SOTA congratulates him on noticing the mistakes, and continues the story using challenging vocabulary. Dennis feels that he was able to learn new words from his interaction with SOTA.

Mary uses SOTA in a school environment where she has to take turns with other students. She set the language level at beginner. SOTA tells Mary a story and awaits her responses. Mary responds unclearly, and SOTA asks her to respond differently. This encourages Mary to choose better responses when answering questions. After talking and playing with SOTA, Mary becomes more and more encouraged to talk with her classmates and her family notices that Mary’s communicating skills have improved a lot.