Abstract
Social robots have the potential to provide support in a number of practical domains, such as learning and behaviour change. This potential is particularly relevant for children, who have proven receptive to interactions with social robots. To reach learning and therapeutic goals, a number of issues need to be investigated, notably the design of an effective child-robot interaction (cHRI) to ensure the child remains engaged in the relationship and that educational goals are met. Typically, current cHRI research experiments focus on a single type of interaction activity (e.g. a game). However, these can suffer from a lack of adaptation to the child, or from an increasingly repetitive nature of the activity and interaction. In this paper, we motivate and propose a practicable solution to this issue: an adaptive robot able to switch between multiple activities within single interactions. We describe a system that embodies this idea, and present a case study in which diabetic children collaboratively learn with the robot about various aspects of managing their condition. We demonstrate the ability of our system to induce a varied interaction and show the potential of this approach both as an educational tool and as a research method for long-term cHRI.
Highlights
Human-robot interaction (HRI) research seeks to understand the interaction between humans and robots and build systems to support that interaction
The efforts we present in this paper are oriented: We seek to extend the effectiveness of child-robot interactions by improving the behaviour of the robot
The work presented in this paper attempts to extend the scope of child-robot interaction (cHRI) research by overcoming the limitations of the approaches focused on one activity only
Summary
Human-robot interaction (HRI) research seeks to understand the interaction between humans and robots and build systems to support that interaction. The rapid development of humanoid robots in recent years has kindled a new interest for social robotics in the research community and for the general public alike It has become an important research topic to define and understand what constitutes a successful human-robot interaction experience ( for children, as our target user group). Our domain of interest is the development and application of robotic companions to aid children with diabetes to learn how to manage their condition as they become increasingly independent (Blanson-Henkemans et al, 2012) (Fig. 1) This problem requires the robot to support behaviour and habit change (over extended periods of time), to facilitate learning of facts and concepts (over shorter time scales), and to provide this in a manner conducive to positive child temperaments. Whilst this excludes numerous studies conducted in a similar domain but with adults, the particular requirements of dealing with children entail a more restricted focus (Salter, Werry, & Michaud, 2007; Beran, Ramirez-Serrano, Kuzyk, Fior, & Nugent, 2011; Belpaeme et al, 2013)
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