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Tele-operated social robots (telerobots) offer an innovative means of allowing children who are medically restricted to their homes (MRH) to return to their local schools and physical communities. Most commercially available telerobots have three foundational features that facilitate child–robot interaction: remote mobility, synchronous two-way vision capabilities, and synchronous two-way audio capabilities. We conducted a comparative analysis between the Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) and commercially available telerobots, focusing on these foundational features. Children who used these robots and these features on a daily basis to attend school were asked to pilot the HSR in a simulated classroom for learning activities. As the HSR has three additional features that are not available on commercial telerobots: (1) pan-tilt camera, (2) mapping and autonomous navigation, and (3) robot arm and gripper for children to “reach” into remote environments, participants were also asked to evaluate the use of these features for learning experiences. To expand on earlier work on the use of telerobots by remote children, this study provides novel empirical findings on (1) the capabilities of the Toyota HSR for robot-mediated learning similar to commercially available telerobots and (2) the efficacy of novel HSR features (i.e., pan-tilt camera, autonomous navigation, robot arm/hand hardware) for future learning experiences. We found that among our participants, autonomous navigation and arm/gripper hardware were rated as highly valuable for social and learning activities.
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The Power of Robot-mediated Play: Forming Friendships and Expressing Identity
Tele-operated collaborative robots are used by many children for academic learning. However, as child-directed play is important for social-emotional learning, it is also important to understand how robots can facilitate play. In this article, we present findings from an analysis of a national, multi-year case study, where we explore how 53 children in grades K–12 (n= 53) used robots for self-directed play activities. The contributions of this article are as follows. First, we present empirical data on novel play scenarios that remote children created using their tele-operated robots. These play scenarios emerged in five categories of play: physical, verbal, visual, extracurricular, and wished-for play. Second, we identify two unique themes that emerged from the data—robot-mediated play as a foundational support of general friendships and as a foundational support of self-expression and identity. Third, our work found that robot-mediated play provided benefits similar to in-person play. Findings from our work will inform novel robot and HRI design for tele-operated and social robots that facilitate self-directed play. Findings will also inform future interdisciplinary studies on robot-mediated play.
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- PAR ID:
- 10486444
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2573-9522
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 21
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3611656
