Virtual Reality Serious Game with the TABAN Robot Avatar for Educational Rehabilitation of Dyslexic Children

Emerging technologies such as social robotics and virtual reality have found a wide application in the field of education and tutoring particularly for children with special needs. Taban is a novel social robot that has been designed and programmed specifically for educational interaction with dyslexic children, who have various problems in reading despite their normal intelligence. In this paper, the acceptability and eligibility of a virtual reality serious game with the presence of the Taban social robot avatar was studied among nineteen children six of whom were dyslexic. In this game, children perform attractive practical exercises while interacting with the Taban avatar in a virtual environment to strengthen their reading skills; then the game automatically evaluates their performance and the avatar gives them appropriate feedback. The sense of immersion in the 3D virtual space and the presence of the Taban robot avatar motivates the children to do the assignments. The results of the psychological assessment using the SAM questionnaire are promising and illustrate that the game was highly accepted by both groups of children. Moreover, according to statistical analysis, the performance of children with dyslexia in the exercises was significantly weaker than their typically developing peers. Thus, this V2R lexicon game has the potential for screening dyslexia.