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How do people use their faces and bodies to test the interactive abilities of a robot? Making lively, believable agents is often seen as a goal for robots and virtual agents but believability can easily break down. In this Wizard-of-Oz…
We present dialogue management routines for a system to engage in multiparty agent-infant interaction. The ultimate purpose of this research is to help infants learn a visual sign language by engaging them in naturalistic and socially…
Robot-assisted therapy is an emerging form of therapy for autistic children, although designing effective robot behaviors is a challenge for effective implementation of such therapy. A series of usability tests assessed trends in the…
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder find robots easier to communicate with than humans. Thus, robots have been introduced in autism therapies. However, due to the environmental complexity, the used robots often have to be controlled…
Imitation plays an important role in development, being one of the precursors of social cognition. Even though some children with autism imitate spontaneously and other children with autism can learn to imitate, the dynamics of imitation is…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots powered by a large language model (LLM) are entering young children's learning and play, yet little is known about how young children construe these agents or how such construals relate to engagement.…
A key challenge in developing engaging social robots is creating convincing, autonomous and responsive agents, which users perceive, and treat, as social beings. As a part of the collaborative project: Expressive Agents for Symbiotic…
The growing development of robots with artificial emotional expressiveness raises important questions about their persuasive potential in children's behavior. While research highlights the pragmatic value of emotional expressiveness in…
This paper studies the non-verbal behavior of a conversational agent named Arthur. We propose the development of body movements for this agent, which interacts solely through voice commands, chat, and videos with facial animations. This…
We present the design of an online social skills development interface for teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The interface is intended to enable private conversation practice anywhere, anytime using a web-browser. Users…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can profoundly affect reciprocal social communication, resulting in substantial and challenging impairments. One aspect is that for people with ASD conversations in everyday life are challenging due to…
As child-robot interactions become more and more common in daily life environment, it is important to examine how robot's errors influence children's behavior. We explored how a robot's unexpected behaviors affect child-robot interactions…
Artificial agents, particularly humanoid robots, interact with their environment, objects, and people using cameras, actuators, and physical presence. Their communication methods are often pre-programmed, limiting their actions and…
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…
Facial expressiveness plays a crucial role in a robot's ability to engage and interact with children. Prior research has shown that expressive robots can enhance child engagement during human-robot interactions. However, many robots used in…
Historically, researchers have focused on analyzing WEIRD, adult perspectives on technology. This means we may not have technology developed appropriately for children and those from non-WEIRD countries. In this paper, we analyze children…
Understanding and modelling children's cognitive processes and their behaviour in the context of their interaction with robots and social artificial intelligence systems is a fundamental prerequisite for meaningful and effective robot…
Children and adults with cerebral palsy (CP) can have involuntary upper limb movements as a consequence of the symptoms that characterize their motor disability, leading to difficulties in communicating with caretakers and peers. We…
Generative AI (genAI) is increasingly being integrated into children's everyday lives, not only through screens but also through so-called "screen-free" AI toys. These toys can simulate emotions, personalize responses, and recall prior…
In this exploratory study we assessed how attitudes of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) towards robots together with children's autism-related social impairments are linked to indicators of children's preference of an…