Dr G Castellano won £344,786 from the Commission of the European Communities for the project EU FP7 EMOTE - EMbOdied-perceptive Tutors for Empathy-based learning.
Significant work has been devoted to the design of artificial tutors with human capabilities with the aim of helping increase the efficiency achieved with a human instructor. Yet, these systems still lack the personal, empathic and human elements that characterise a traditional teacher and fail to engage and motivate students in the same way a human teacher does. The EMOTE project will design, develop and evaluate a new generation of artificial embodied tutors that have perceptive capabilities to engage in empathic interactions with learners in a shared physical space.