SIMA Robot

The world does not have enough teachers to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal of Quality Education by 2030, according to UNESCO in the next decade must be incorporated 69 millions of new teachers. This goals seems more difficult to achieve after the COVID19, since the capacities of actual teachers to provide quality education and support to children have been reduced because the distance.
We address this problem with SIMA Robot, a learning companion which support children in their learning process, guiding the development of academic activities in home or in the classroom.
SIMA runs through an app, transforming any mobile devices into an educative social assistant, able to interact by voice and gestures (Like SIRI or Alexa). But the must powerful about SIMA is that he connect with the Knowledge cloud platform, where any teacher or specialist can develop and edit new knowledge interaction to adapt SIMA their students

According to UNESCO 700 millions of children in the world, 95% of the primary students, loss the opportunity of access to their schools, losing the opportunity of learn from their interaction with their teachers and peers. 

This also revealed a more deep problem, which are the inequities in the access to the education technologies. This has become specially significative in rural context and with student with low internet connection. 

In the Americas and Caribbean is estimated in more than 200 millions of primary student which are struggling to access to the education

We are targeting more than 10 million people in the region  which have access to at least a mobile phone and have loss access to the education. 

SIMA is a social robot based on a mobile app, a robotic body and a cloud platform, who make him able to understand language and guide the development of different educative activities.

SIMA runs in any mobile device, his interface is conformed by a face able to show different facial expressions and use a the speech to text technology to understand what their user are saying. We use chatbot developed in the IBM Watson platform to process the Natural Language and respond according to the users social queries. And use the SIMA Knowledge platform to adapt a the voice command that SIMA is able to understand.

Thanks to the SIMA Knowledge platform any teacher can develop new voice command and their responses in "scenes", to develop new interactions, as if they were making a play. Each scenes can be accompanied with images and sounds which are displayed in the belly of SIMA while he is speaking. This platform makes posible to anyone to develop new knowledge to SIMA Robot

one more thing... Optionally SIMA also connect with an anthropomorphic robotic body which gives him social presence and complete a full immersive experience.

Our willing is tu use the power of social robot to make possible that any children have access toa a learning companion able to guide and motivate then without matter their condition or context.

The biggest impact of SIMA is with early age and SEN students, because they are the less autonomous to make the activities sent by teacher in the remote education and the ones who need more support in their learning process.

SIMA have the capability of interact with them bringing short instruction and motivational message to the students, while they are studiying and making the activities in homes. All the interaction of SIMA can be customized by teachers in the "Knowledge" platform, where teachers and specialists adapt the behavior of SIMA as if they where making a theater play. 

SIMA impact the life of children because it becomes a companion able to interact and a guide them through the realization of the educative activities outside the screen. SIMA also motivate and increase their interest in the content them 

And impact the life of teachers because it empower them to use a very a powerful technology, the social robots, adapted to the interest and context of their students

After Covid19 we've started to use SIMA in the mobile devices of the students families as a tool to mediate remote education between teachers and students. This was specially significative for early age students, because at this age the learning process happen through the social interaction (Vigotsky), but because the social distance they loss the opportunity to learn interacting with their teachers. Today teachers are using SIMA as tool adapted to the needs and context of each student including rural context with low connection where students download the knowledge of their robots to receive the lessons.

This year we've started to work with different schools as customers using SIMA as a learning companion in different communities across Chile. Today we are working in rural schools in the commune of San Jose del Maipo near Santiago, Commune of Cañete in the south and the Escuela de Concentration Fronteriza in the Tulahuen town at the forth region of Chile. In this context is very common the lack of good internet connection and and they use SIMA with the offline feature, where students download the contents (knowledge) previously then use it in their homes. 

We also have been working with schools in near cities like Santiago (Colegio San Alberto Magno, Colegio Altamira, Escuela de Lenguaje Mi mundo en palabras), Valparaíso (Scuola Italiana Villa Alemana), Concepcion (Colegio Andres Bello Chiguayante) in urban context. Between this institutions we have more than 2000 paid users, and 14000 users with the freemium app 

We are the first Social Robotic company of LATAM and the first in the region using robots as a tool to mediate education with children. But the most innovative thing about SIMA, is not how we've introduced robots in education, but the way how we empower teachers to manage an AI robotic tool to develop the XXI century skills in their students and inspires them to build better technologies. 

Thanks to SIMA the teachers don't need to know any coding languages to use it, because it have a platform where anyone can program the knowledges of the robot as if they were writing a theater play. This is a very important aspect to democratizing this technology in the education industry, making it really available for teachers to teach.

The other very important innovative aspect is how we make this technology affordable for anyone or any institution. We leverages on smartphones, cloud platforms and 3D prints to develops full interactive social robots for children, which support teachers works. This is unique in the world and can be scaled from the Patagonia to the Amazonia in a very lean model, where schools and institution just need an internet connection, an smartphone and optionally a 3D printer to build their robots.

STT - Speech to text

NLP - Natural Language Processing, trained in IBM Watson to recognize social interaction

TTS - Text to Speech

3D Printing - To build the robotic body of SIMA and hols the mobile device

Cloud platform - To manage adapted and individualized contents per students 

Cloud platform - To allow teachers to develop new Knowledges for each SIMA

Some examples of testimonial of the teacher which are using SIMA in the last years. This includes, schools with SEN students, Rural Schools and Schools with the whole Robot in the classroom.

“It has been a wonderful contribution to my educational work, the children are amazed because they learn through it (SIMA). It's like a friend, we plan and teach together. Parents are very happy because children learn through play ”.

Laura Guerrero, Kindergarten Teacher, Julieta Becerra Álvarez School. - Rural Schools in Chile Testimonio

“It is incredible the effect it has on children when the robot says their names and asks them something about the story they just read. They pay attention and work at ease "

Claudio Garrido, Pedagogical Coordinator of Colegio Andrés Bello de Chiguayante. - School with the full SIMA’s Social Robot Lab SIMA in the classroom and SIMA in the classroom 2

"SIMA allows the adaptation and design of activities based on their needs"

Lucely Guevara, Speech Therapist, Antioquia Rehabilitation Committee. -  Institution which use SIMA with adapted activities to SEN Students Testimonio

“We did a review of educational apps for children before we met SIMA Robot, but the interaction went directly to the screen and the buttons. On the other hand, with SIMA they start by talking to him, greeting him, and exercising basic social interaction skills "

Alison Santos, Occupational Therapist, Mundo TEA. - Institution which use SIMA with adapted activities to SEN Students Kid interacting with SIMA

The reject to adopt new technologies in education, because of the concern on how to adopt it for teachers and parents and the real impact in the learning process. We address this by training all the stakeholders of the schools: Teachers, Parents and Managers.

We've also identified a cultural barriers in our stakeholders, concerning to the adoption of robots, because in some context teachers believe they are going to be replaced. This happen because of the gap between what people think the robot can do, to what they really can do and how they can use this tech in their favor.

Because we leverage on the smartphone technology there are concerns about the long exposures of children to screens. We address this problem making SIMA able to recognize the time and proposing activities to make outside the screen as a peer tutor.

For last there are also concerns about the privacy and security of the social interactions of SIMA with the students. We address this by not making SIMA able to hear any noice until the user touch the hearing button.

Today we are working directly with more than 2.000 paid recurrent users in the platform SIMA Knowledge and expect to finish the year with more than 7.000 paid users according to the contracts we have in the pipeline. 

We estimated we can keep growing with this model and reach 50.000 paid users to the end of 2022 with users in Chile, Colombia, Argentina. And with the necessarily partnerships we can reach to be serving 1.000.000 users with this model in five years.

For the next year our main impact goals will still be based on the thousands of students getting support by Sima Robot. Other important measures for us is the number of teachers which are using SIMA to mediate interaction with their students. Specially those who create and share activities in the platform for their student and with the community, because this is our indicator of empowerment of teachers.

For the next five years we must add some new indicators like the number of partnerships with stakeholders which allow us to accelerate the massive adoption, like schools networks, education secretaries, local governments or publishers. Which can use SIMA leveraging the quality of their contents using the SIMA Knowledge platform and help us to increase the number of user which have access to SIMA, between teachers and students. This model is key for us because extend the use a SIMA as a tool to mediate and support the education of millions of students aligned with each curriculum, not only for school but for most bigger stakeholders.

Number of schools: 15

Number of students: 2100

Number of teacher Sharing: 305

Activities created and shared: 3000

Number of partnership and third party contents: 2

We are a highly motivate and multicultural team

1. CEO and CoFounder Felipe Araya MBA Engineer  
2. Chief of Implementation Virginia Días Educator
3. CTO Hugo Araya our lead engineer and AI expert
4. Teachers Supports Angela Pineda which is a SEN and Pre schools educator 
5. Nicolas Soto - Videogame developer and interaction leader

WE ARE READY TO WORLD WIDE DELIVER!

I've started this startup with my wife Virginia, because we wanted our son have the best education posible. I used to build robots in my home but my child get scared of them. This was one of the reasons because we've started to research about social robots and realized the impact of this technology on education in countries like Japan, Corea an USA.

Them we build a prototype and started the Startup Chile program where we deliver our first robots. In this time we realized we need to improve the technology and call my brother Hugo to guide the electronic development. 

With this output we were able to go to the most important show of technology of the world the CES2020 held by the Consumer Technology Association. But in those time our main focus was selling robots to schools and comes the pandemic, so we have to transform the business model to the new normal and decided to launch SIMA as a Saas the platform, leverages by the Knowledge platform which allow teacher to develop and delivers contents. 

After we finished the platform we started different pilots in Chile and in Colombia having a big impact in the ways as SIMA is used and started a new stage of selling a software product growing in users and impact.

Because I've started this company with my wife (and son around), in a different country, where we've born. We believe that SIMA was born with gender equality and with a multicultural view. We encourage diverse opinion inside the team and look for a balance in the the team members. 

For our team is very important being aware of this, because we are developing technology based on AI and is imposible to leaves our biases while we are making SIMA. 

We work hard to make a tool able to interact with every child which can be adapted to any context.

One of our most powerful divers to applying to the Tprize is because we want to belong to a network which can bring us advice and mentorship according to the stage of our company, specially considering the industry in where we are. Specially after dramatically and successfully changed our business model from robots to schools to a Saas Model, with educative digital assistants. Today we are growing and feel the need to develop strategies which allow us to do it faster. To reach to more communities and more schools, improving the way teachers and student learn from technology.

In term of our main barrier we believe that the Prize can help us to amplify the work we have been doing, not only with schools, but also with VCs which don't use to invest in Edtech. We hope to draw a fundraising roadmap for an Edtech.

We also believe that trough the MIT network we can help to make easy the transition of the adoption of this technology in the education, specially considering that the first research with social robots in education were made in the MIT. 

We are looking for partners which help us to develop a scale strategy beyond LATAM. With an strong network in the Edtech industry, which allow us to use SIMA adapted to different context with a huge contents base.

For us is very important to shorten the length of our pilots and reach the decision makers in schools and governments. 

We are also looking for VC funds with Edtech experiences to present it SIMA Robot, to close the seed round and launch next rounds.

Today we are looking to partner with different types of organizations: Country Governments, Publishers and Maker communities.

Local Governments: They are a very important stakeholder we are looking to partner because they hold a big majority of our user base and they can promote the use of SIMA applying scale-economies in the content creation aligned with their curriculum objetives.

Country Distributors: Which allow us to operate in different region optimized the force of sales

Publishers: As governments they allow us to applied scale-economies in the context development and that can adapt the Knowledge of SIMA to their Ups and contents. Santillana, Macgraw hill, Pearson 

MIT Media Lab: Basically because here born the concept of social robots and we are so proud to take this technology to real people using it for improve life

Boston Fablab community