Humanoid robot as learning media has the potential of approaching not only cognitive aspect but also affective aspect of learning, which is mainly due to its social presence. The social presence originates from its anthropomorphized and embodied media. In addition to the social presence, nonverbal behavior to be conducted by humanoid robot could also bring about learners’ affectivity/emotion contributing to cognitive benefits. Related work on learning with social robot has been referring to human communication behavior and its model to explore the effects and possibility of robot communicating with learners. This paper describes the current states of learning with social robot. This paper also introduces a new approach to designing a model for robot behavior to develop social robot as learning media, and demonstrates a robot lecture system for promoting learners’ engagement in lecture. Let me finally discuss future issues including model design and adaptation for robot–learner interaction.
