Social Robot on Interactive Playground

This project was the Human Media Interaction Project, performed in groups. The goal of this project was to combine the possibilities of a social robot with those of an interactive playground. The social robot can provide personal interaction, whereas the interactive playground provides possibilities for interactive feedback. We used the social robot to test the influence of its behaviour on collaboration between children, while playing a game in pairs on on the interactive playground. The goal of the game was to hedge eggs, which were randomly located over the playground, by standing on them for a while. However, when one child stood on an egg, it would pair with another egg. When another child would stand on the second egg, both eggs would hedge twice as fast. In addition, the children had to protect the eggs from being grabbed by a cat.

The collaboration between the children in two conditions was compared. In the first condition, the robot would reciprocate helpful behaviour and in the second the robot did not. In the first condition, the robot would actively help the children in breeding together, in the second condition the robot only performed actions individually. Behaviours of the robot were designed according to previous research. The robot used Gibberish speech, could move and contained LEDs to communicate with the children. The robot was not an autonomous robot, but was controlled via a WoZ approach; a person was controlling the robot from another room. The social robot was positioned as a peer, like the children mutually. To test the difference between the two conditions, an extra game event was inserted. In this event the robot would express his need of help. The behaviour of the children in both conditions was observed. In addition, the children were interviewed.

We found a difference in reciprocity between the helpful and un-helpful condition, when looking at intended help. The helpful robot received intended help more often than its un-helpful counterpart. The results of this research imply that children are more inclined to reciprocate help towards a robot that is also helpful towards them.