Preschool children’s social and playful interactions with a play-facilitating cardboard robot

Abstract

Robots are increasingly finding roles in contexts involving children, including companions in therapy and education. Children’s perceptions of and interactions with robots is a well-researched topic, but more focus is needed on the important role of play in Child–Robot Interaction. Play is essential to how children experience the world and thereby presents both opportunities and challenges for designers who aim to create positive experiences for children involving robots. We present a study investigating how a simple play-facilitating cardboard robot becomes a social interface and create meaningful and playful experiences for preschool children. We observed 214 children engaged in free play with the robot. The analysis produced four social interaction themes and five play patterns, illustrating the most salient reactions. The results show that the robot was successful in enabling play and that the children indeed treated the robot both as a social agent, but also as a material object. In line with existing research, our observations suggest that the children attributed both animate and inanimate properties to the robot, possibly explaining the duality of the observed playground behavior. We use these findings to provide four implications for the design of play-facilitating robots.