Towards long-term social child-robot interaction: using multi-activity switching to engage young users

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

Friendship with a robot : Children's perception of similarity between a robot's physical and virtual embodiment that supports diabetes self-management

OBJECTIVE: The PAL project develops a conversational agent with a physical (robot) and virtual (avatar) embodiment to support diabetes self-management of children ubiquitously. This paper assesses 1) the effect of perceived similarity between robot and avatar on children's' friendship towards the avatar, and 2) the effect of this friendship on usability of a self-management application containing the avatar (a) and children's motivation to play with it (b). METHODS: During a four-day diabetes camp in the Netherlands, 21 children participated in interactions with both agent embodiments. Questionnaires measured perceived similarity, friendship, motivation to play with the app and its usability. RESULTS: Children felt stronger friendship towards the physical robot than towards the avatar. The more children perceived the robot and its avatar as the same agency, the stronger their friendship with the avatar was. The stronger their friendship with the avatar, the more they were motivated to play with the app and the higher the app scored on usability. CONCLUSION: The combination of physical and virtual embodiments seems to provide a unique opportunity for building ubiquitous long-term child-agent friendships. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: an avatar complementing a physical robot in health care could increase children's motivation and adherence to use self-management support systems

Friendship with a robot: Children's perception of similarity between a robot's physical and virtual embodiment that supports diabetes self-management

OBJECTIVE: The PAL project develops a conversational agent with a physical (robot) and virtual (avatar) embodiment to support diabetes self-management of children ubiquitously. This paper assesses 1) the effect of perceived similarity between robot and avatar on children's' friendship towards the avatar, and 2) the effect of this friendship on usability of a self-management application containing the avatar (a) and children's motivation to play with it (b). METHODS: During a four-day diabetes camp in the Netherlands, 21 children participated in interactions with both agent embodiments. Questionnaires measured perceived similarity, friendship, motivation to play with the app and its usability. RESULTS: Children felt stronger friendship towards the physical robot than towards the avatar. The more children perceived the robot and its avatar as the same agency, the stronger their friendship with the avatar was. The stronger their friendship with the avatar, the more they were motivated to play with the app and the higher the app scored on usability. CONCLUSION: The combination of physical and virtual embodiments seems to provide a unique opportunity for building ubiquitous long-term child-agent friendships. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: an avatar complementing a physical robot in health care could increase children's motivation and adherence to use self-management support systems

Design and evaluation of a personal robot playing a self-management education game with children with diabetes type 1

Objective To assess the effects of a personal robot, providing diabetes self-management education in a clinical setting on the pleasure, engagement and motivation to play a diabetes quiz of children (7–12) with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), and on their acquisition of knowledge about their illness. Methods Children with T1DM (N = 27) participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in which they played a diabetes mellitus self-management education (DMSE) game, namely a diabetes quiz, with a personal or neutral robot on three occasions at the clinic, or were allocated to a control group (care as usual). Personalised robot behaviour was based on the self-determination theory (SDT), focusing on the children's needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy. The SDT determinants pleasure, motivation and diabetes knowledge were measured. Child-robot interaction was observed, including level of engagement. Results Results showed an increase in diabetes knowledge in children allocated to the robot groups and not in those allocated to the control group (P =.001). After three sessions, children working with the personal robot scored higher for determinants of SDT than children with the neutral robot (P = .02). They also found the robot to be more pleasurable (P =.04), they answered more quiz questions correctly (P =.02), and were more motivated to play a fourth time (P = .03). The analysis of audio/video recordings showed that in regard to engagement, children with the personal robot were more attentive to the robot, more social, and more positive (P < .05). Conclusion The study showed how a personal robot that plays DMSE games and applies STD based strategies (i.e., provides constructive feedback, acknowledges feelings and moods, encourages competition and builds a rapport) can help to improve health literacy in children in an pleasurable, engaging and motivating way. Using a robot in health care could contribute to self-management in children with a chronic disease and help them to cope with their illness.Design Aesthetic

A Cloud-based Robot System for Long-term Interaction: Principles, Implementation, Lessons Learned

Making the transition to long-term interaction with social-robot systems has been identified as one of the main challenges in human-robot interaction. This article identifies four design principles to address this challenge and applies them in a real-world implementation: cloud-based robot control, a modular design, one common knowledge base for all applications, and hybrid artificial intelligence for decision making and reasoning. The control architecture for this robot includes a common Knowledge-base (ontologies), Data-base, "Hybrid Artificial Brain"(dialogue manager, action selection and explainable AI), Activities Centre (Timeline, Quiz, Break and Sort, Memory, Tip of the Day, ), Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA, i.e., robot and avatar), and Dashboards (for authoring and monitoring the interaction). Further, the ECA is integrated with an expandable set of (mobile) health applications. The resulting system is a Personal Assistant for a healthy Lifestyle (PAL), which supports diabetic children with self-management and educates them on health-related issues (48 children, aged 6-14, recruited via hospitals in the Netherlands and in Italy). It is capable of autonomous interaction "in the wild"for prolonged periods of time without the need for a "Wizard-of-Oz"(up until 6 months online). PAL is an exemplary system that provides personalised, stable and diverse, long-term human-robot interaction.Interactive Intelligenc