Virtual cognitions are simulated inner thoughts, which are presented as a voice over. Previous research has shown the ability of virtual cognitions to increase the self-efficacy and knowledge of the users. When presenting such VR systems to users, having the VR system adapt to the user can improve their efficacy. For instance, by using eye-gaze tracking in order to adapt the VR scenario based on what the user is looking at. The measures of the ownership and plausibility of virtual cognitions were found to be important in previous research. The research described in this thesis has incorporated a social aspect into a gaze-adaptive VR system with virtual cognitions. A system was designed which puts the user in a social VR scenario where a dialogue between 3 virtual characters is shown. The user watches and listens from the perspective of one of the 3 characters. An experiment was carried out over consecutive days, where each day a new social scenario would be used. The scenario of that day would be shown twice. Once being gazeadaptive, and once non-adaptive. After each of the 2 viewings of the VR scenario, the participants would fill in a questionnaire to measure ownership and plausibility. The results did not show a significant difference between the gaze-adaptive and non-adaptive scenarios on ownership and plausibility. The eye-gaze is determined by using special VR-goggles, with built-in cameras, capable of measuring eye-gaze.

A large problem that primary schools face is that the ratio of pupils to teachers is too high, the class sizes are too large and this makes it difficult for a single teacher to have a good oversight of how the development of a given child is going. The aim of Interactive Robotics is to tackle this problem by bringing robots into the classroom to aid teachers. They aim to have a single robot in a classroom that has the ability to teach different lessons and subjects; the RekenRobot being specifically for basic arithmetic. During the research phase, ideas were gathered regarding how to create teaching methods that are motivating and stimulating. For instance, personalisation, humanising the robot and adaptability of the teaching material were desired functions. The software for the RekenRobot was built from scratch, using the programming language GOAL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML and JSP. The original target audience of the project were children between the ages of 6 and 8. Later this was changed to cover different school years: 3-4, 5-6 and 7-8, making use of levels with different degrees of difficulty. The robot can work one-on-one with a child, being able to practice addition, subtraction, times tables and telling time, as well as 2 forms of explanations can be given: making use of a bus and a number line. Using no explanation to rather focus on automation is also an option. The idea of the project was to lay the groundwork for the later development of the RekenRobot, as this will be an ongoing project for Interactive Robotics. The application designed in this project will be adapted to become part of the Interactive Robotics system. The first user tests at primary schools yielded a largely positive result. The children were excited and motivated to work with the product. The system is simple enough to require very little explanation. This project was never meant to realise a product that can be deployed tomorrow, but the result is a very solid basis for further improvements.