Maya: An artificial intelligence based smart toy for pre-school children

Toys are valuable educational tools that, while entertaining, they also help in childhood development. Traditional instructional materials do not adequately take into account children’s individual development abilities. New instructional materials should be developed so that children can obtain education in accordance with their own learning pace and learning processes. The possible benefits to be drawn from smart devices that cater to more than one sensory organ simultaneously and the inferences to be drawn from scenarios utilizing such instructional materials are amazing. The aim of this study was to develop a smart toy using artificial intelligence in order to support the concept development of preschool children in terms of numbers, shapes, animals and colors. In this study, the design and development process of the smart toy Maya is explained. Maya is a humanoid robot that supports children in learning at their own pace and can determine what and how to teach and to which child. It is an intelligent tutoring system that can perform image processing and natural language processing in the teaching process. Maya is being able to recognize its user, to interact, and to manage learning activities according to the learning speed of the child. A design-based research method was used in the study. A needs analysis was conducted during the design phase of the smart toy, and the attributes that a toy should provide to help the acquisition of the concept by children were determined. A toy prototype was developed within the framework of the determined criteria. Preschool teachers were interviewed about the prototype toy. Improvements were made to the toy in response to its perceived flaws as well as other feedback, and the second iteration of the smart toy was developed. The toy’s shortcomings were discovered through interviews and were then removed, and the toy was given its final form. An interactive smart toy which can be used for both individual and group activities was developed at the end of research. In this study, the educational, hardware and software components of the smart toy are emphasized, and a framework for the smart toy design and the development process is provided.