  Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have been applied in various
domains, including early childhood education (ECE). Integration of AI
educational technology is a recent significant trend in ECE. Currently, there
are more and more studies of AI in ECE. To date, there is a lack of survey
articles that discuss the studies of AI in ECE. In this paper, we provide an
up-to-date and in-depth overview of the key AI technologies in ECE that
provides a historical perspective, summarizes the representative works,
outlines open questions, discusses the trends and challenges through a detailed
bibliometric analysis, and provides insightful recommendations for future
research. We mainly discuss the studies that apply AI-based robots and AI
technologies to ECE, including improving the social interaction of children
with an autism spectrum disorder. This paper significantly contributes to
provide an up-to-date and in-depth survey that is suitable as introductory
material for beginners to AI in ECE, as well as supplementary material for
advanced users.
