KinderMate: Transform Learning, Redefine Growth

Research has established the adverse effects screen time can cause in children, in terms of their mental and physical well being. Yet screen time has become such an essence of life, to the point that households cannot function without it. Kindermate is committed to address this precise issue- redefine screen time to make it part of children’s healthy mental and physical growth.

We are proposing a complete on-line learning platform for children to help develop their cognitive and social abilities in a positive way- a platform offered by none other by far. It is not just limited to education but also developing family bonds.

If it was scaled globally, the solution would help raise and nurture millions of families- both children and parents. Where societies are now succumbing to the aftereffects of internet, our application can help reverse the situation in terms of helping families to raise well balanced children. 

It would not be an overstatement if we labeled present times as the age of screen. The most convenient way of relief for the working-class parents is to offer their children screen time to get some time of their own. However, this seemingly pragmatic effort shows controversial results in recent times. Researchers have discovered the negative impact of screen time on children’s development in socialization, cognitive ability and motor skills. Parents are further concerned about information hygiene and what their kids are doing and watching on screen. As cybercrimes and privacy violations are ever increasing, children are deemed to be the most vulnerable group. Screens are also accused of desensitizing and promoting aggression in kids. Recent research further found that active video games cannot be considered as a physical activity. Given that early childhood is most important for fundamental motor skill development it is crucially important for children not to overuse the screen.

At this moment working parents with nuclear families around the world have no alternative but to expose children towards screen time. How can we offer screens to our kids in a way which would help them to learn and grow cognitively, emotionally and physically?

We are serving families- children, parents, and caregivers. These are families across societies and countries who are working hard to strike a proper balance in raising children the modern way.

Our application is developed with the support of professional child psychologists. The apps are then tested on children- children of our team members, greater families and friends. We incorporate their feedback and suggestions. For the families whom we cannot directly reach out to personally, our app has a provision for them to send us in their valuable feedback.

Our learning platform for children helps develop cognitive, social, and fundamental motor skills. It aims to instill family bonds and values in children which are void in the existing online platforms. The application further aims to simulate emotional and social developments that would exist in live interactions. With the help of advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies it guarantees safety by ensuring that children have access to only those material for which they are eligible. This gives parents and caregivers comfort about the ‘online’ environment that their children are engaged in. 

Existing technologies are not offering any effect size alternative to screens. To help kids in their early childhood development we are offering an interactive app which helps kids to develop the following skills.

Cognitive

• Increasing Attention – Interactive stories and conversations help kids learn how to be attentive
• Critical Thinking – Brain teasers that foster logical thinking and reasoning.
• Analytical Ability – helps build analytical skills by using simple maths, counting etc.
• Reciting – teaching a nursery rhyme among others. This is being developed.
• Currently there are brief pop-ups when kids are using the app for long durations. It’s a way to break the video marathon and promote exercise, science, safety, chores, etc.

 Language and Communication Development

 Real-time structured conversations to develop language, communication skills and manners.  Frog helps to develop social skills by regularly greeting the user throughout the day.

 Motor Skills

• Fine Motor Skills- Curated DIY channels exist to learn crafting, gardening etc.
• Gross Motor Skills- During app use, we have interruptions that promote physical movement like walking, cycling, sit-up, etc. We are using gyro and other sensors of the smart device to detect how engrossed the child is in their viewing.

Parental Control

• Only parents can download and sign up
• KidSAFE certified and COPPA compliant
• Live content curating using AI and Machine Learning.  We process subtitles, titles, description, and the video itself by analyzing frames. Parents can block contents, particular words, etc. We are using Natural Language Processing to make this less error prone to specific syntax. Content blocking patterns of parents automatically influence worldwide blocking.
• Child Activity Log – Parents can view activity log for individual profiles. We send weekly email to parents with most recent activities.
• Daily reminder- Alarm system to maintain daily routine of the kids. Currently being developed.

Social Development

Upholding family values and bonding- There will be provision for parents to insert stories and pictures of their greater family to make kids acquainted with them.

It will take voice command of the kids to call close relatives and friends via Viber, WhatsApp or similar app approved by parents.

KinderMate uses different machine learning and AI technologies. We have a focused clinical psychology team working on and researching the cognitive needs of a child. But the best participants are the children themselves. It is through their and their parent’s feedback we continue to strive for innovation.

Our journey started with a unique endeavor to use screens to solve problems it is creating for the little lives as they have the greatest impact on the future of this planet. A screen is like a boat floating in the sea. We provide the opportunity for the parents to steer the ship for their kids. KinderMate is one of its kind, as it provides the most comprehensive solution embracing every aspect of our children's development including social, emotional, physical and cognitive.

There are lots of popular kids video apps which provide a safe browsing environment. However, KinderMate provides a platform for the children where their data is safe. Having received the COPPA certification, KinderMate ensures that the information within the app, including the biometrics, are not stored anywhere, not even within the device itself.

KinderMate utilizes AI and machine learning to learn children’s behavioral patterns, becoming their friend that encourages positive behaviors and attitudes. Interactive and educative conversations with Frog, the avatar, creates a platform for the child to be inquisitive in their early years, while rewarding them for gaining knowledge. By talking to the child about their daily interactions with others, KinderMate is able to recognize worrying behavioral patterns and informing the guardian about any alarming incidents that the child confides to Frog.

KinderMate is further working for kids' self-awareness. It is an important skill as kids can recognize their strengths and see how their behavior affects others. They will be well tuned to their surroundings. 

KinderMate utilizes AI and machine learning to smartly interact with its user base and protect their young minds from the unsafe sections of the internet. The Recommendations Engine filters video search results in real-time using keywords, ratings and inappropriate image detection, without relying on static information/curated videos. The app filters the newest video uploads without human intervention. Parents have administrative control so they can unblock content if needed. The technology uses Video Processors and Just-in-time Content Curation on servers for very high concurrences.

KinderMate utilizes a conversational interface using Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, allowing it to recognize childlike articulation. It communicates back in proper language to foster the development of verbal communication skills. NLP also works in tandem with the search suggester and search engine to lookup relevant content processed by our Content Crawler.

The Analytics Engine can process behavioral data to identify statistical trends. Regression Models for predictive analysis are also in development.

A robotic add-on is being developed, which can attach to any smart device having KinderMate installed. The app will take over the bot and enable basic movement. Using Computer Vision, it can recognize faces, detect objects, track motion, and recognize gestures. Interactions with the child will be more spontaneous and unpredictable, transforming into a social robot.

For Vision AI, KinderMate maintains privacy and COPPA compliance by running the neural nets at the edge. So the inferences on video frames
are run on the smart device itself, and only non-personal metadata is
sent to the server.

We believe, given the word limitation, the most valid and credible way to answer this question is to refer to academic journals instead of grey literature or our own research. Our primary objective was to provide a balanced early childhood development program because personality and experience shaped in early childhood cannot be removed by later experience (http://dx.doi.org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.834). The early childhood intervention programs are highly effective in the physical, cognitive, linguistic and social readiness of schooling (https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(02)00655-4). The medium we recognized as the most impactful is the screen media as this world has been experiencing an exponential increase in the use of screen media for quite some time now (https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.17724/jicna...) and there is no effect size alternative to that. There are increasing concerns on negative impact of screen time (https://doi-org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1542/peds.2...) but at the same time it depends on three interrelated factors like attributes of the child, characteristics of the screen media stimuli; and the varied environmental contexts surrounding the child’s screen media (https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10...). They also suggested that the positive influence of media screen depends on how children can relate it to their own life. That is why we kept the provision for incorporating own stories and pictures. Moreover, through interactive session our app can encourage the kids to perform structured and unstructured physical activity which researchers think enhance fundamental motor skill competency (http://dx.doi.org.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/10.1080/0892...).

Current number of people- 1000

Number of people in one year- we would like to reach out to 100,000 people

In five years- we would like to reach out to millions.

Although the target audience is children, we believe this application will benefit families and societies across countries.

In the coming years, KinderMate aims to incorporate more languages in the app. This will integrate more cultures and help families across various communities to instill their own traditions and heritage in their children. It can also help children of other cultures to learn their mother tongue as well as new languages if they wish. As a result, it will bring cultures across the world closer together. A robotic add-on is in the prototyping stage, which can be attached to any smart devices which have KinderMate installed in them. It is when children are at an impressionable age that they learn the fastest. The KinderMate robotic add-on will be a smart companion for the child, helping the child to have a little robotic pet that teaches the child to be well-behaved, compassionate, well-mannered and friendly.

We are dealing with multifaceted hurdles to become global and achieve our desired technical sophistication through a continuous learning process. In the coming year, improvements to inappropriate video detection and minimization of false rejections are expected. The system will detect weapons, alcoholic drinks, and other items inappropriate for children using machine learning. Presently, KinderMate's own inappropriate image detection neural network is in the works.

We appreciate values of different cultures and want to instil the beauty of diversity in the young minds. In doing so we plan to incorporate more languages and knowledge of different cultures. It is imperative that we have in our team individuals, e.g. linguists, social scientists, data analysts who not only specialize in their respective fields, but also belong to varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

We foresee that expanding the team, may remain standing in the next year, considering that work is still underway to design machine learning models and architectures to accommodate our plans of making our app compliant to different languages and cultures, let alone making the required employment decisions. Provided that we can overcome this in the next year, the other remaining hurdle would be securing steady finances to support improvement of the app and its growth via expansion of the technology and the team.

The other barrier is to reach out to the global platform and promote our products and services accordingly while still being aligned to KinderMate's values of privacy of the many families it hopes to serve. 

In order to address the technical challenges we have a plan in place for continuous development of our employees to do R&D and push boundaries to come up with innovative solutions. This comes along with a personal motivation as well as financial incentives. But most importantly the main passion is in sharing the vision of this application and how we want to steer its development to address a social cause.

To address the multi-lingual  and marketing aspects we have resorted to the Solve platform with the vision that our work and technology might appeal to people and thus we will be able to create a good network of experts in the appropriate fields. The Solve platform will also help us to get exposure in a global platform. Marketing the application involves a huge financial investment. For now we would like to make this investment mainly in our technology so we can continue making improvements in making KinderMate a holistic solution for early childhood development. Our technical team is the greatest resource we have now. Promotion of the application will take place in its natural course if our customers are happy with it. Solve can help us to trigger the speed that is needed to set our journey at the right pace.

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Full time staff: 12 people

Contractual staff: 1 person

Inadequate childhood development is an equally tricky problem in both developed and developing countries. It has been observed that the effects of underdeveloped emotional and cognitive abilities, instigated by under or poor development during childhood, is carried over to the later years of their life. The KinderMate team constitutes a team of expert programmers, testers, analysts, and psychologists. The team, most being parents themselves, are wary of the ill effects that poor childhood development can have on children. The personal emotional drive, combined with our exhaustive experience in software development, machine learning, mechatronics and child psychology, motivates the KinderMate team to create an expansive app which facilitates early childhood development using technology. With a successful record of accomplishments in the fields of natural language processing and computer vision with artificial intelligence, the team is confident of being able to deliver the ideal platform for children to grow in tandem with the modern world of technology in a healthy online environment.

Childhood is special and we help parents to make sure that their kids are getting the most out of it in a very safe and secure online environment, which is both mentally and physically stimulating. We have a dedicated group of technical experts and psychologists, who believe in, and share the same vision, while consistently aspiring to make the best experience for everyone.

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Children within the 2-10 age range and their parents/guardians are the primary beneficiary groups. Currently, services are available in the form of purchasable subscriptions and is the primary source of revenue. As strong advocates of safe and stimulating environment for children, the KinderMate team believes that the effects of proper childhood development are disseminated across the society, and has more value than just revenue.

To ensure absolute privacy of the children, KinderMate does not store any information submitted in-app. The COPPA certification gives users the peace of mind that their data is completely secure.

Since KinderMate stores no data from the users, the app is ad-free. The only disruptions in the application are aimed strictly at developing mental and physical abilities of the young user base.

KinderMate provides a trial period of three months, during which time no features within the app are restricted. Afterwards, subscription can be purchased on a monthly or yearly basis. Monthly subscription is priced at USD 7.99, while the yearly subscription is available at the price of USD 51.99, at a  discount of more than 45% on the per-month cost. By the end of 2019, the trial period will end for the first phase of customers. We would like to reduce the trial period to 1 month eventually.

Keeping in mind the affordability of parents in different regions this pricing has been formulated for developed countries. We want to reduce subscription prices significantly for developing countries and make it free in some instances.

Our biggest areas of expenditure are salaries, 3rd party services and server costs. As we scale up subscriptions, 3rd party service charges are expected to increase.

KinderMate plans to diversify its income through multiple streams, so that the app becomes increasingly less reliant on subscriptions. The complementary robotic add-on is in development, which will be sold separately as an IOT product. The robotic add-on will be modular in nature and can be attached with any possible future release of hardware add-ons. The platform will also be used as a hosting service for children content. An inexhaustible list, including children stories, comics, videos, animations and mini-series, will be hosted so that KinderMate finds use as a small digital library. Moreover, policies are being researched, to make the app usable as a universal education and communication tool for teachers. This feature will assist educators to develop means of digital delivery of knowledge. It will also help to bring in corporate subscriptions with schools that use screens as  a mode for teaching and conducting lessons.

By applying to Solve, KinderMate aims to come under the spotlight to be able to attract the attention of researchers and technical experts in the relevant fields. Solve is a massive platform worldwide for innovators. Potentially revolutionary ideas are presented at Solve. So naturally, it attracts the attention of large audiences, many of whom may be fellow researchers, potential investors, etc. Solve can help to launch KinderMate to allow it to help reach more children and families all over the world.

Researchers and experts who focus on topics such as early childhood development, nutrition and healthcare can be of massive help to KinderMate to develop programs which can help the young users learn and take care of themselves. Attracting such professionals will be made much easier with the help of Solve’s platform and connections. Solve can also help to bridge the gap between KinderMate and international organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, etc.

Solve can help us to get the global exposure that KinderMate needs to showcase it’s solution to the world in order to address a very contemporary and pressing need- salvaging childhood growth and innocence.

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The partnerships that are made with KinderMate will have to take into account that it promises safety and security by not storing any of the information that its users submit in-app. KinderMate’s vision will be greatly helped by forming partnerships with NGOs and other organizations that help children locally or internationally. This includes organizations such as UNICEF, UNESCO, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Save The Children, amongst others. Such organizations have programs in place to directly tackle problems regarding early childhood development.

Other organizations who have similar programs, and can be of help to KinderMate, include World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), American Psychological Association, Family Online Safety Institute, and others.

These organizations can help KinderMate through funding and research on the relevant topics. Such studies will help to make KinderMate more expansive as an application and help to educate the children in more focused manners.

Aside from these, other platforms such as TED can help to elevate the status and reach of KinderMate to new levels. Online services such as Audible can be a possible partner to provide quality information and allow Frog, the avatar in KinderMate, to present stories and education from a huge online library. This can help to reduce costs on resources as well, allowing the utilization of finances in other sectors.

KinderMate would also like to reach out to schools that use technology as a means to deliver lessons to children.

KinderMate’s vision is of a world where children are able to reach their full potential despite all the distractions and obstacles that may come their way. We are now living in a world where we are surrounded by screens. Smartphones and tabs have replaced toys and TVs as the children’s source of entertainment. KinderMate wants to redefine what the children take away from the content that is presented to them on these screens. Our researchers strive to produce a platform to provide personalized, safe, positive and helpful responses and recommendations for content on the internet. We use computer vision, machine learning and natural language processing, involving custom-made models and voice recognition, to synthesize speech and filter videos in real-time, creating a safe online environment.

KinderMate aims to become the safest and smartest child-friendly content discovery platform available. We plan to reach more families, overcoming language barriers and cultures. AI systems will be developed tailored for specific regions, keeping in mind local language and cultural norms. Simultaneously, we are working on a robotic add-on which will be a playful partner in the child’s budding years. Our continuously improving and expanding features will give rise to humane technology that encompasses every aspect of early childhood development, including healthcare/ nutrition, sanitation, safeguarding against child abuse and social learning. The prize will largely be used to materialize our plans for the app.

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