A Columbia company created a tool that’s been named one of the best inventions of 2020: A kid-friendly robot that climbed to new levels of success as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
ABii (pronounced “ahh-bee”) is an educational robot that functions as a personal tutor, created to help elementary school-aged students improve their math and reading skills.
TIME magazine has named ABii one of the top 100 inventions of 2020, alongside other creations that include the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s latest XBox, Nike’s latest high-tech running shoes, an app by L’Oreal that uses an algorithm to personalize skincare and makeup products, and a start-up vodka distilling company that’s removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
“This is no mere toy,” TIME wrote of ABii. “Its edge: using a camera to detect changes in student attention and optimizing its tutoring approach to resonate with individual learners.”
Laura Boccanfuso, a Midlands mother and entrepreneur, is the brains behind ABii. She earned a PhD in computer science from the University of South Carolina and founded Van Robotics in Columbia in 2017. But her work developing ABii, Van Robotics’ signature product, goes back a decade.
Over the course of her studies and research at USC and at Yale University, Boccanfuso developed several social robots that preceded ABii, including a robot designed to work with children with autism and another for students with other learning challenges. ABii was created to interact with children with a range of attention spans and learning abilities.
“During my first robotics class, and after conducting some research for a class project, I started to learn about the positive impact that robots can have in changing the trajectory of learning for young students,” Boccanfuso said. “Working with groups of kids from different backgrounds and with various learning difficulties really inspired me to work closely with experts in education, intervention and child psychology to learn how to build technologies that support their work in the field.”
Designed to fit on a desktop, ABii works by interacting with children as they practice 10-15 minute lessons designed by teachers to meet national education standards. ABii walks children through each lesson and works to keep kids engaged by monitoring their attention cues and adapting to their learning habits. ABii dances, gives high-fives and offers personalized verbal feedback.
ABii was recognized by S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster at the governor’s mansion in 2019, and received an innovation grant from the S.C. Department of Education to study students’ math skills improvement.
The robot has been used in about 40 schools across 26 states, including in 18 school districts in South Carolina.
But this year, when most schools across the country closed their doors amid the pandemic and students — and their parents — were suddenly thrust into at-home learning, ABii found an even broader purpose.
In June, a new version of ABii geared toward home use was released after the company received requests from parents who “were very concerned that their students would be losing important learning that they had typically received in the classroom,” Boccanfuso said.
There are about 500 ABii robots currently available for purchase for $599 apiece for at-home use with three software licenses, or $999 for schools to use with 30 student licenses.
Van Robotics’ next big project, currently under development, is a new robot, MARii, designed to tutor older adults in piano lessons.
For more information about ABii, visit www.smartrobottutor.com.