Background: Play is critical for children’s physical, cognitive, and social development. Technology-based toys like robots are especially of interest to children. This pilot study explores the affordances of the play area provided by developmentally appropriate toys and a mobile socially assistive robot (SAR). The objective of this study is to assess the role of the SAR on physical activity, play behavior, and toy-use behavior of children during free play. Methods: Six children (5 females, M age = 3.6 ± 1.9 years) participated in the majority of our pilot study’s seven 30-minute-long weekly play sessions (4 baseline and 3 intervention). During baseline sessions, the SAR was powered off. During intervention sessions, the SAR was teleoperated to move in the play area and offered rewards of lights, sounds, and bubbles to children. Thirty-minute videos of the play sessions were annotated using a momentary time sampling observation system. Mean percentage of time spent in behaviors of interest in baseline and intervention sessions were calculated. Paired-Wilcoxon signed rank tests were conducted to assess differences between baseline and intervention sessions. Results: There was a significant increase in children’s standing (∼15%; Z = −2.09; p = 0.037) and a tendency for less time sitting (∼19%; Z = −1.89; p = 0.059) in the intervention phase as compared to the baseline phase. There was also a significant decrease (∼4.5%, Z = −2.70; p = 0.007) in peer interaction play and a tendency for greater (∼4.5%, Z = −1.89; p = 0.059) interaction with adults in the intervention phase as compared to the baseline phase. There was a significant increase in children’s interaction with the robot (∼11.5%, Z = −2.52; p = 0.012) in the intervention phase as compared to the baseline phase. Conclusion: These results may indicate that a mobile SAR provides affordances through rewards that elicit children’s interaction with the SAR and more time standing in free play. This pilot study lays a foundation for exploring the role of SARs in inclusive play environments for children with and without mobility disabilities in real-world settings like day-care centers and preschools.
more »
« less
Let Them Have Bubbles! Filling Gaps in Toy-Like Behaviors for Child-Robot Interaction
Robot-mediated interventions are one promising and novel approach for encouraging motor exploration in young children, but knowledge about the effectiveness of toy-like features for child-robot interaction is limited. We were interested in understanding the characteristics of current toys to inform the design of interactive abilities for assistive robots. This work first provides a systematic review of toy characteristics in n=154 Fisher-Price products and then analyzes the effectiveness of common and uncommon toy-like behaviors from our custom assistive robot. Toy review results showed that light and sound features were significantly more common than bubbles, wheels, and self-propulsion. Exploratory play sessions with our assistive robot showed that bubbles were significantly more successful at encouraging child motion than other robot behaviors. Further, all studied robot behaviors demonstrated the capability to encourage child motion. The products of this work can inform the efforts of human-robot interaction and child development experts who study child mobility interventions.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2024950
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10352151
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 7417 to 7422
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Early intervention to address developmental disability in infants has the potential to promote improved outcomes in neurodevelopmental structure and function [1]. Researchers are starting to explore Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) as a tool for delivering early interventions that are synergistic with and enhance human-administered therapy. For SAR to be effective, the robot must be able to consistently attract the attention of the infant in order to engage the infant in a desired activity. This work presents the analysis of eye gaze tracking data from five 6-8 month old infants interacting with a Nao robot that kicked its leg as a contingent reward for infant leg movement. We evaluate a Bayesian model of lowlevel surprise on video data from the infants’ head-mounted camera and on the timing of robot behaviors as a predictor of infant visual attention. The results demonstrate that over 67% of infant gaze locations were in areas the model evaluated to be more surprising than average. We also present an initial exploration using surprise to predict the extent to which the robot attracts infant visual attention during specific intervals in the study. This work is the first to validate the surprise model on infants; our results indicate the potential for using surprise to inform robot behaviors that attract infant attention during SAR interactions.more » « less
-
Impact of Interaction Context on the Student Affect-Learning Relationship in Child-Robot InteractionPrior work in affect-aware educational robots has often relied on a common belief that the relationship between student affect and learning is independent of agent behaviors (child’s/robot’s) or unidirectional (positive/negative but not both) throughout the entire student-robot interaction.We argue that the student affect-learning relationship should be interpreted in two contexts: (1) social learning paradigm and (2) sub-events within child-robot interaction. In our paper, we examine two different social learning paradigms where children interact with a robot that acts either as a tutor or a tutee. Sub-events within child-robot interaction are defined as task-related events occurring in specific phases of an interaction (e.g., when the child/robot gets a wrong answer). We examine subevents at a macro level (entire interaction) and a micro level (within specific sub-events). In this paper, we provide an in-depth correlation analysis of children’s facial affect and vocabulary learning. We found that children’s affective displays became more predictive of their vocabulary learning when children interacted with a tutee robot who did not scaffold their learning. Additionally, children’s affect displayed during micro-level events was more predictive of their learning than during macro-level events. Last, we found that the affect-learning relationship is not unidirectional, but rather is modulated by context, i.e., several affective states facilitated student learning when displayed in some sub-events but inhibited learning when displayed in others. These findings indicate that both social learning paradigm and sub-events within interaction modulate student affect-learning relationship.more » « less
-
Objective: We present a literature review on workplace physical fatigue interventions, focusing on evaluating the methodological quality and strength of evidence. Background: Physical fatigue is a recognized workplace problem, with negative effects on performance and health-related complaints. Although many studies have focused on the mechanisms and consequences of fatigue, few have considered the effectiveness of interventions to mitigate fatigue. Method: A systematic review of the workplace safety literature for controlled trials of physical fatigue interventions was conducted. Data on intervention type, subject characteristics, targeted tasks and body locations, outcome measures, and study design were extracted. The methodological quality for each study was evaluated using the PEDro scale, and the level of evidence was based on quality, amount, and consistency. Results: Forty-five controlled trials were reviewed, examining 18 interventions. We categorized those interventions into individual-focused ( N = 28 studies, nine interventions), workplace-focused ( N = 12 studies, five interventions), and multiple interventions ( N = 5 studies, four interventions). We identified moderate evidence for interventions related to assistive devices and task variation. There was moderate evidence supporting no fatigue attenuation for the garment change category of interventions. The interventions in the remaining categories had limited to minimal evidence of efficacy. The heterogeneity of the included trials precludes the determination of effect size. Conclusion: This review showed a lack of high levels of evidence for the effectiveness of most physical fatigue interventions. Application: Due to a lack of high levels of evidence for any category of reviewed physical fatigue interventions, further high-quality studies are needed to establish the efficacy of others.more » « less
-
In this work, we discuss a theoretically motivated family-centered design approach for child-robot interactions, adapted by Family Systems Theory (FST) and Family Ecological Model (FEM). Long-term engagement and acceptance of robots in the home is influenced by factors that surround the child and the family, such as child-sibling-parent relationships and family routines, rituals, and values. A family-centered approach to interaction design is essential when developing in-home technology for children, especially for social agents like robots with which they can form connections and relationships. We review related literature in family theories and connect it with child-robot interaction and child-computer interaction research. We present two case studies that exemplify how family theories, FST and FEM, can inform the integration of robots into homes, particularly research into child-robot and family-robot interaction. Finally, we pose five overarching recommendations for a family-centered design approach in child-robot interactions.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9812031
