Social Robot Selection: A Case Study in Education

Abstract

In this paper the problem of selecting the appropriate social robot in education is being investigated for the first time. The social robot selection task is handled as a multi-criteria decision making problem and solved using the TOPSIS ranking method. Initially, a set of criteria is defined, based on the technical properties and human-interaction capabilities of the social robots. In a second stage some experts quantify a set of alternative social robots according to the predefined criteria and the robots are ranked by applying the TOPSIS method. The preliminary results are very promising and reveal the necessity of selecting the most suitable social robot subject to the educational needs and the technical requirements defined by the end user.