skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Attention:

The NSF Public Access Repository (PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 11:00 PM ET on Friday, November 14 until 2:00 AM ET on Saturday, November 15 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Family Theories in Child-Robot Interactions: Understanding Families as a Whole for Child-Robot Interaction Design
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
Award ID(s):
2202803
PAR ID:
10446678
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IDC '23: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
Page Range / eLocation ID:
367 to 374
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; (, ACM)
    As robotic products become more integrated into daily life, there is a greater need to understand authentic and real-world human-robot interactions to inform product design. Across many domestic, educational, and public settings, robots interact with not only individuals and groups of users, but also families, including children, parents, relatives, and even pets. However, products developed to date and research in human-robot and child-robot interactions have focused on the interaction with their primary users, neglecting the complex and multifaceted interactions between family members and with the robot. There is a significant gap in knowledge, methods, and theories for how to design robots to support these interactions. To inform the design of robots that can support and enhance family life, this paper provides (1) a narrative review exemplifying the research gap and opportunities for family-robot interactions and (2) an actionable family-centered framework for research and practices in human-robot and child-robot interaction. 
    more » « less
  2. ; (, ACM)
    Technical and practical challenges in human-robot interaction (HRI) research often involve facilitating sustained long-term interactions, fostering engagement with multiple individuals, and taking place in-the-wild. The home environment embodies all three challenges, as multiple family members regularly engage with technology at home. In our research, we take a family-centered approach to understand, design, and evaluate how social robots can take part in setting and maintaining family routines to support long-term HRI. In our prior work, we conducted participatory design sessions with children and families to understand their preferences for having social robots in their home. We then designed interactions for robot-facilitated routines. Finally, our future work will include field studies investigating how robot-facilitated routines can support long-term engagement in family-robot interactions and facilitate connections. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; (, ACM)
    Social robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in the real world. Unsupervised user interactions in a natural and familiar setting, such as the home, can reveal novel design insights and opportunities. This paper presents an analysis and key design insights from family-robot interactions, captured via on-robot recordings during an unsupervised four-week in-home deployment of an autonomous reading companion robot for children. We analyzed interviews and 160 interaction videos involving six families who regularly interacted with a robot for four weeks. Throughout these interactions, we observed how the robot's expressions facilitated unique interactions with the child, as well as how family members interacted with the robot. In conclusion, we discuss five design opportunities derived from our analysis of natural interactions in the wild. 
    more » « less
  4. (, IDC '20: Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference)
    Child-robot interactions in educational, developmental, and health domains are widely explored, but little is known about how families perceive the presence of a social robot in their home environment and its participation in day-to-day activities. To close this gap, we conducted a participatory design (PD) study with six families, with children aged 10--12, to examine how families perceive in-home social robots participating in shared activities. Our analysis identified three main themes: (1) the robot can have a range of roles in the home as a companion or as an assistant; (2) family members have different preferences for how they would like to interact with the robot in group or personal interactions; and (3) families have privacy, confidentiality, and ethical concerns regarding a social robot's presence in the home. Based on these themes and existing literature, we provide guidelines for the future interaction design of in-home social robots for children. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; (, ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction)
    In early motor interventions from clinical rehabilitation to physical activity encouragement, one major challenge is maintaining child engagement and motivation. Robots show unique promise for addressing this challenge, but providing robots with new types of autonomous functionality is vital for promoting robot integration and usefulness in the clinic and home spaces. To provide needed autonomy capabilities for GoBot, our assistive robot for child–robot motion interventions, we propose a behavior tree framework. Within our framework, we build two trees: one manually designed based on expert knowledge of the child–robot interaction domain, and a second automatically synthesized and requiring minimal human input and time to construct. We tested each behavior tree withN= 11 children who interacted with GoBot during two behavior tree phases and a stationary-robot control phase. Our results show that both behavior tree phases tended to yield more child motion and significantly higher parent perception of child engagement, compared to the control phase. We showed that GoBot, equipped with our framework, has the potential to encourage movement and interaction in children and that a synthesized tree can be competitive with a manually designed tree. The products of this work can benefit researchers of behavior trees and child–robot interaction. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email