Robot Design for Young Children

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Social robots are emerging into environments with young children, such as daycares, schools, hospitals, and homes, where they are designed to use human-like social techniques. Emerging research highlights that these child-robot interactions can surprisingly often lead to negative and inappropriate interactions, such as bullying or over-trust. I argue that this results directly from robots being designed for young children, without the field having the tools or knowledge of how to appropriately do so; recent findings demonstrate that robots need to be designed specifically for children, yet we do not know how. As a field we need to develop robot guidelines and behaviours that are specifically designed for children. The long-term goal of my work is to move the field forward in knowing how to design robots for young children. Through this work, I will develop prescriptive frameworks to guide design and interaction behaviours of robots for home and school use with young children. My work uses novel methods for assessing child-robot interaction with preschool-aged children, a largely understudied user group in Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction. Scientific approach I employ standard Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction methodology, drawing where needed from Psychology, Sociology, and Linguistics. I will (a) conduct user-centred and co-design workshops with young children to help ensure that robot designs match expectations and conceptual models of robots, (b) conduct a series of laboratory and field experiments to develop frameworks of children's expectations, interactions, and caveats with robots, helping to better understand what we might expect when young children interact with robots, and develop measurement tools to assess the appropriateness of robot behaviours, and (c) develop and test new robot behaviours for interaction with children at home and daycare. Specifically, I will focus on the following components: (1) Social Components of Interaction - aspects such as likability, friendliness, information sharing (2) Logistical Requirements - aspects such as microphone placement, child-specific language, robot abilities, robot errors (3) Outcomes of Interaction - aspects such as trust, friendship, usefulness, respect This research program will the first in Canada (and one of few in the world) that investigates how to design interactive robotic technologies for preschool-aged children. Through my work, I will develop new interaction paradigms, and research methodologies to investigate them, moving forward the fields of Human-Robot Interaction and Human-Computer Interaction. My research will also provide the necessary knowledge to be able to implement robots that lead to positive outcomes with young children, preventing the short- (and potentially) long-term negative developmental outcomes that are seen with currently available robots.