• Began sales of Atti, a smartphone-based educational robot for children, both online and offline
  • Atti is designed to enhance children's multiple intelligence through interactive learning features and well-made educational contents

SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced that it today began sales of Atti (a Korean word meaning close friend or buddy), a cute, friendly-looking robot that uses a smartphone as its brain. Customers can experience and buy Atti at 'Robot World 2013,' the largest robot exhibition in Korea held October 24-27, 2013 at KINTEX, Ilsan. Atti is also available for purchase online at 11st, SK Planet's online shopping mall. Moreover, to commemorate the launch of Atti, the company will offer a 30 percent discount from the original price of KRW 549,000 for the first 1,000 purchasers.

Designed as an education tool for children aged 4-7, Atti offers a wide range of interactive features that make learning more interesting and effective. The cute little robot begins working when the user inserts an Android smartphone - i.e. all Android-based smartphones, regardless of model and carrier - to its cradle and runs the designated mobile application named 'Atti Home' on the handset. At present, through the application, Atti offers six different educational games including a rhythm game, English game and Chinese character game as well as a Korean-English multimedia dictionary containing 3,000 + words.

In particular, Atti's English educational contents have been developed under joint research with Utah State University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world that leads the field of education technology. The results of the joint studies conducted on children of diverse ethnicity/race showed that children commonly regarded Atti as a friend and tried to communicate with it, and were able to understand and memorize English words/expressions more effectively by interacting with the robot.
Atti's interactive features are realized through various sensors - e.g. optical sensor, proximity sensor, touch sensor, etc. - embedded in its round-shaped body. Atti also comes with a Magic Wand that has an optical reader at the bottom (to function as an electronic pen), motion sensor and a microphone.
Park Chol-soon, Senior Vice President and Head of Convergence Business Office at SK Telecom said, "SK Telecom has finally launched Atti, the most advanced learning robot, after two years of thorough preparation. We are confident that Atti will prove to be a helpful learning tool for preschoolers and satisfy Korean parents, who are the most demanding customers in the world when it comes to education."

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