No matter how long your Duolingo streak is, learning a language is hard.
Especially if you’re trying to learn one of thousands of endangered Indigenous languages (and that little green owl only knows Navajo and Hawaiian).
To help preserve disappearing languages, 24-year-old robotics designer Danielle Boyer created Skobot, a wearable robot to teach young people Indigenous languages — beginning with her own, Anishinaabemowin.
Voiced by community members and powered by ethical AI, the robot is an extension of Boyer's efforts to make STEM education more accessible to Indigenous communities and kids, per American Indian Magazine.
You get a robot! You get a robot!
Boyer, who is Anishinaabe and a citizen of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, grew up the daughter of an electrical engineer father and an artist mother.
- Her interest in robots began early, but opportunities were financially inaccessible.
- Boyer taught herself to build robots, and began teaching STEM classes, later joining a high school robotics club.
- At 18, Boyer launched the STEAM Connection — adding Art to STEM — a charity to make technical education accessible to youth through robotics.
STEAM's first initiative was EKGAR — Every Kid Gets a Robot — an app-controlled educational robotic car kit that costs less than $20 and goes to kids for free.
Meet Skobot the robot
While roughly 167 Indigenous languages are spoken in the US, it’s estimated that only 20 will remain by 2050.
Within her own community, Boyer saw rapid language loss and her grandmother was the only fluent Anishinaabemowin speaker in her family.
Uniting her passion for robotics with language preservation, Boyer created the Skobot.
- The interactive robot responds to voice commands to teach users Anishinaabe-language dialects.
- Recordings of children's voices — not synthetic ones — explain the meaning of words, and works without WiFi.
- Made of recycled materials, the Skobot is designed by an Anishinaabe artist to look like woodland animals, and perches on the user's shoulder.
- Given away for free to Indigenous organizations for kids to build themselves.
- Skobot uses internally developed ethical AI software that maintains data sovereignty and control, and minimizes environmental impact.
Future Skobot models will respond to users in full sentences. Through the STEAM Connection Boyer plans to develop more initiatives to increase access to technical education for Indigenous communities.
Other language preservation projects
- Michael Running Wolf co-founded First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR), designed to reverse the loss of North American Indigenous languages through community-centered AI.
- The Dakota Language Project uses games to keep dialects alive.
- Canada's FirstVoices enables users to share Indigenous languages.
Maybe that little green owl could learn a thing or two.
Education
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