Related papers: Toward Anxiety-Reducing Pocket Robots for Children
From dating to job interviews, making new friends or simply chatting with the cashier at checkout, engaging in small talk is a vital, everyday social skill. For adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), small talk can be particularly…
Social robots are emerging as learning companions for children, and research shows that they facilitate the development of interest and learning even through brief interactions. However, little is known about how such technologies might…
Children's emotional development fundamentally relies on secure attachment relationships, yet current AI companions lack the theoretical foundation to provide developmentally appropriate emotional support. We introduce DinoCompanion, the…
Introduction: Socially assistive robots hold promise for enhancing therapeutic engagement in paediatric clinical settings. However, their successful implementation requires not only technical robustness but also context-sensitive,…
Social robots are increasingly introduced into children's lives as educational and social companions, yet little is known about how these products might best be introduced to their environments. The emergence of the "unboxing" phenomenon in…
Advanced service robots require superior tactile intelligence to guarantee human-contact safety and to provide essential supplements to visual and auditory information for human-robot interaction, especially when a robot is in physical…
We present a Research-through-Design case study of the design and development of an intimate-space tangible device perhaps best understood as a socially assistive robot, aimed at scaffolding children's efforts at emotional regulation. This…
Teaching programming in early childhood (4-9) to enhance computational thinking has gained popularity in the recent movement of computer science for all. However, current practices ignore some fundamental issues resulting from young…
Tactile interaction plays a crucial role in interactions between people. Touch can, for example, help people calm down and lower physiological stress responses. Consequently, it is believed that tactile and haptic interaction matter also in…
Loneliness and stress are prevalent among young adults and are linked to significant psychological and health-related consequences. Social robots may offer a promising avenue for emotional support, especially when considering the ongoing…
This work explores a group learning scenario with an autonomous empathic robot. We address two research questions: (1) Can an autonomous robot designed with empathic competencies foster collaborative learning in a group context? (2) Can an…
More than a decade has passed since the development of FearNot!, an application designed to help children deal with bullying through role-playing with virtual characters. It was also the application that led to the creation of FAtiMA, an…
This paper presents an exploratory study designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) that investigates children's awareness of being imitated by a robot in a play/game scenario. The Nao robot imitates all the arm movement…
Successful, enjoyable group interactions are important in public and personal contexts, especially for teenagers whose peer groups are important for self-identity and self-esteem. Social robots seemingly have the potential to positively…
Anxiety disorders are the most common class of psychiatric problems affecting both children and adults. However, tools to effectively monitor and manage anxiety are lacking, and comparatively limited research has been applied to addressing…
AI-assisted learning companion robots are increasingly used in early education. Many parents express concerns about content appropriateness, while they also value how AI and robots could supplement their limited skill, time, and energy to…
In this paper, we identify challenges in children's current information retrieval process, and propose conversational robots as an opportunity to ease this process in a responsible way. Tools children currently use in this process, such as…
Social robots have been used to assist with mental well-being in various ways such as to help children with autism improve on their social skills and executive functioning such as joint attention and bodily awareness. They are also used to…
There is a growing interest in social robots to be considered in the therapy of children with autism due to their effectiveness in improving the outcomes. However, children on the spectrum exhibit challenging behaviors that need to be…
In this paper, we present a pilot study aiming to investigate the challenges of teaching AI and Robotics to children in low- and middle-income countries. Challenges such as the little to none experts and the limited resources in a Mexican…