ROYBI uses AI and robotics to create interactive learning experiences for children
Elnaz Sarraf is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in technology, business, sales, and marketing. Elnaz is the founder and CEO of ROYBI, an investor-backed EdTech focusing on early childhood education, AI, and robotics.
Throughout her research, Elnaz found that children were attuned to technology, but often, they’re the borrowers of tools that have been made for adults. Getting children engaged with educational technology at a young age provides educational, social, and emotional fulfilment that can last until adulthood. Elnaz addressed this opportunity by founding ROYBI, using the latest technology available on the market, while creating an educational robot that could facilitate self-guided learning using AI. With over 500 lessons, including language learning, basic Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), stories, games, and songs, ROYBI uses AI to create a fun and interactive learning experience for children with a focus on teaching children; using machine learning to gradually adjust and tailor content to children. ROYBI evaluates the learning progress of each child, creating academic and scientific growth reports and assessments, and creates progress reports for parents to track their child’s development.
Starting with ROYBI, which guides a child’s linguistic development beyond traditional pedagogies, facilitating collaboration between home and school contexts, Elnaz hopes to make a real impact in early childhood education. Thousands of children globally have used ROYBI Robot since its launch in November 2019 and since then, Roybi children have demonstrated an 84 percent growth rate in learning progress.
ROYBI uses Amazon Rekognition, which provides highly accurate facial analysis and facial search capabilities to analyze faces and initiate conversations with the user. ROYBI also uses Amazon Lex, a service that builds conversational interfaces into applications using voice and text for facilitating a connection between ROYBI Robot and children in a friendly, conversational way. Working with AWS EdStart, ROYBI was able to seek technical help, gain access to pitch to EdTech investors, and connect with other founders at the AWS EdStart Global Builders’ Conference. With this additional help, ROYBI launched its product five months ahead of schedule.
“Within our team, we call the AWS EdStart team our family, and that is how much we appreciate their support for us. From the early stages of ROYBI, when we barely had a working prototype, the AWS EdStart team gave us all kinds of support from AWS credits to technical support. We had regular meetings with the engineers and attended workshops, founder dinners, and various events. The AWS EdStart team has always been active in supporting our company, especially understanding our mission to transform early childhood education,” said Elnaz.
