This research examines how to design social robots to support self-regulated learning skills for piano practice. More specifically, a social robot is used to provide feedback to children and initiate self-assessment. To assess the impact of this approach on children’s motivation and performance, we conducted an experiment in a music school where 50 children practiced with both a self-assessment and a non-evaluative robot. Results showed that when the children interacted with the self-assessment robot they had higher motivation and better performance than when they interacted with the non-evaluative robot. Furthermore, interaction effects were found between the robot conditions, the children’s learning stages, and their gender regarding their motivation and rhythm performance. Overall, the study demonstrates a positive influence of robot-initiated self-assessment on children’s musical instrument practice and provided insights for personalized child-robot interaction design.

There are numerous strategies for reducing the stress and anxiety associated with pain that children experience before and after surgery. There is a potential communication barrier between hospital staff and the child which may result in inadequate pain management. Social robots may reduce the gap between the support that personnel can provide and what the children's emotional needs are. This study qualitatively evaluates the interactions between children and their parents who interact with the social robot MiRo-E. In the overall interaction, the robot would act like a pet and show different behaviours based on the estimated pain level of the children. However, in the current study, only the quality of the robot interaction behaviours was tested with healthy children and no pain was measured. During this study, two usability tests were done. Each usability test evaluated a different robot interaction. In both tests, children and their parents evaluated the designed interactions. Results indicate that children initially have different responses to the robot. They can either be held back from immediately interacting or they are not afraid of the robot at all and start touching it and interacting immediately. Although the intended behaviours could be more elaborate and personalized, both children and their parents appeared to like the different emotions shown by the robot and how it responded to their touch. The parents also offered some ideas to enhance the interaction between a child and a robot in a medical context, such as by including more sounds, making some behaviours more distinct, and allowing kids to customize the robot's look.

There is a growing interest in implementing robotics applications for children in healthcare to provide companionship, comfort, education, and therapy. Parental expectations regarding robotics for young children play a critical role in influencing its development and acceptance. However, parental expectations are widely overlooked in HRI. Therefore, a better understanding of what parents of young children expect the robot to do in health-related interactions with robots is needed. To achieve this, we adopted the Technology-Specific Expectation Scale (TSES) [2] and added three more dimensions (i.e., assistive role, social-emotional, and playful distraction) to gauge usersf expectations of robots in healthcare, resulting in TSES-R. This paper reports the development and reliability analysis of TSES-R. Furthermore, this paper presents the preliminary results collected from using the TSES-R with a sample of 31 families, which showcases how these outcomes could be helpful for future related studies.

There is growing interest in psychological interventions using socially assistive robots to mitigate distress and pain in the pediatric population. This work seeks to address the deficit in understanding of what features and functionality young children and their parents desire to help with pain management by using co-design, a common approach to exploring participants' imaginations and gathering design requirements. To close this gap, we carried out a co-design workshop involving seven families (with children aged between 4-6 and their parents) to understand their expectations and design preferences for a robot designed for pain management in children. Data were collected from surveys, video and audio recordings, interviews, and field notes. We present the robot prototypes constructed during the workshops and derive several preferences of the children (e.g, zoomorphic shape, distractors and emotional expressions as behaviors). Additionally, we report methodological insights regarding the involvement of young children and their parents in the co-design process. Based on the findings of this co-design study, we discuss personalization as a possible design concept for future child-robot interaction development.

Using robots to reward and stimulate children doing tasks together can be helpful in improving their social skills. Robots implemented 3 types of behavior scenarios - imitate, enhance and counteract - in a collaborative game of teaching robots perform movements shown by hand gestures. The paper presents a novel account of ASD symptoms based on the interplay of empathic concern and empathic accuracy in different personalities with and without cognitive deficits. Performance of autistic children was compared with two age groups of typically developing children - under and above the age of 7. The study confirmed the limited resource hypothesis - cognitive and motivational - bringing about the observed phenomena in situations of limited attention resources and performance under distraction. The robotic framework for educating children has shown potential for developing of various complex cognitive and social skills and has substantial developmental impact.