No abstract

The influence of holding hands on the relationship building process between children and robots is investigated in this study. In particular, at the first meeting, it is difficult for a child to be open if he/she starts to rebuff the robot partner. This significantly degrades the possibility of the child forming a friendship relationship with the robot. Thus, the initial approach of the robot to the child in the early stage of the relationship building process should be appropriate. We hypothesize that physical embodied communication, such as walking hand in hand, improves the relationship between children and robots. A holding hands system was implemented in a real robot, and an experiment was conducted at a kindergarten to validate our hypothesis. The results strongly support our hypothesis.

No abstract

We propose a playmate robot system that can play with a child. Unlike many therapeutic service robots, our proposed playmate system is implemented as a functionality of the domestic service robot with a high degree of freedom. This implies that the robot can play high-level games with children, i.e., beyond therapeutic play, using its physical features. The proposed system currently consists of ten play modules, including a chatbot with eye contact, card playing, and drawing. The algorithms of these modules are briefly discussed in this paper. To sustain the player's interest in the system, we also propose an action-selection strategy based on a transition model of the child's mental state. The robot can estimate the child's state and select an appropriate action in the course of play. A portion of the proposed algorithms was implemented on a real robot platform, and experiments were carried out to design and evaluate the proposed system.