Abstract
We are developing a social robot that should autonomously interact long-term with pediatric oncology patients. The child and the robot need to get acquainted with one another before a long-term interaction can take place. We designed five interaction design patterns and two sets of robot behaviors to structure a getting acquainted interaction. We discuss the results of a user study (N = 75, 8–11 y.o.) evaluating these patterns and robot behaviors. Specifically, we are exploring whether the children successfully got acquainted with the robot and to what extent the children bonded with the robot.
Results show that children effectively picked up how to talk to the robot. This is important, because the better the performance the more comfortable the children are, the more socially attractive the robot is, and the more intimate the conversation gets. The evaluation furthermore revealed that it is important for children, in order to get familiar with the robot, to have shared interests with the robot. Finally, most children did initiate a bond with the robot.
This work is part of the Hero project and is supported by the research program ‘Technology for Oncology’ (grand number 15198), which is financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF Kankerbestrijding), the TKI Life Sciences & Health, ASolutions, Brocacef, and the Cancer Health Coach. The research consortium consists of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, Princess Máxima Center, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), and the University Medical Centers Amsterdam UMC.
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3 participants showed signs of an extremity bias, where they maxed out every rating. These data points were deemed unreliable and were excluded.
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Ligthart, M., Neerincx, M.A., Hindriks, K.V. (2019). Getting Acquainted for a Long-Term Child-Robot Interaction. In: Salichs, M., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11876. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35888-4_39
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