Multimodal approach to affective human-robot interaction design with children

Abstract

Two studies examined the different features of humanoid robots and the influence on children's affective behavior. The first study looked at interaction styles and general features of robots. The second study looked at how the robot's attention influences children's behavior and engagement. Through activities familiar to young children (e.g., table setting, story telling), the first study found that cooperative interaction style elicited more oculesic behavior and social engagement. The second study found that quality of attention, type of attention, and length of interaction influences affective behavior and engagement. In the quality of attention, Wizard-of-Oz (woz) elicited the most affective behavior, but automatic attention worked as well as woz when the interaction was short. The type of attention going from nonverbal to verbal attention increased children's oculesic behavior, utterance, and physiological response. Affective interactions did not seem to depend on a single mechanism, but a well-chosen confluence of technical features.

Child–Robot Relationship Formation: A Narrative Review of Empirical Research

“…When responsiveness was kept constant, the mode of controlling a robot neither influenced engagement [35] nor enjoyment [140]. While qualitative findings indicate that role was associated with engagement [28,98,111], quantitative findings were inconsistent [36,96,104]. Embodiment increased observed engagement [61,89] unless the interaction was more taskoriented [70,138].…”

“…The effects of expressiveness on experiential states seemed to depend upon the type of expressiveness [62,68,115,128]. In general, robot characteristics had minor or inconsistent influences on children's affect [69,104,106,115,118,128,147]. With respect to the effects of interaction styles on experiential states, strategic interaction seemed to stimulate engagement [20,21,57,73,88,103,127], as well as enjoyment and liking [20,47,60], while emotional and memory-based interaction were positively associated with engagement [2, 4,29,53,82].…”

“…As to the effects of predictors, three patterns stood out. First, children in middle childhood (i.e., 6-12 years old) seemed to be more critical of, and sensitive to, a robot's interaction style than children in early childhood (i.e., 2-6 years old [32]) [83,86,104]. Second, children's tendency to anthropomorphize, as well as influences of anthropomorphic robot features on engagement, seemed to decrease with children's age [57,104].…”

Self–Other's Perspective Taking: The Use of Therapeutic Robot Companions as Social Agents for Reducing Pain and Anxiety in Pediatric Patients

“…Many hope to see robots fulfill multiple roles in our lives (e.g., helpers for senior assisted living, social companions, and learning partners), and currently researchers are making exciting headway in exploring how specific features of robots when combined with specific interactive scenarios can facilitate meaningful and affective engagement. 38 The study demonstrated that engaging in robot-assisted therapy together with the patient helped the parent's perspective taking, thereby triggering strong empathetic resonance and parental modeling to bolster the patient's coping skills. The parent's ability to acknowledge the patient's pain accurately through robot-assisted therapy seemed to reduce pain and emotional anxiety.…”

Introduction to the special issue on affective interaction in natural environments

“…The second article presents the design and evaluation of a virtual signer that produces utterances signed in French Sign Language. Okita et al [2011] present two studies that explore affective human-robot interaction with children using the Honda ASIMO humanoid. The first study examined how varying the robot's interaction style (lecture, cooperative, or self-directed) affected children's behavior; the authors found a cooperative interaction style to be most conducive to social engagement and oculesic behavior.…”