@article {2016, title = {Towards Long-Term Social Child-Robot Interaction: Using Multi-Activity Switching to Engage Young Users}, journal = {Journal of Human-Robot Interaction}, volume = {5}, year = {2016}, note = {Download (Open Access)}, pages = {32{\textendash}67}, abstract = {Social robots have the potential to provide support in a number of practical domains, such as learning and behaviour change. This potential is particularly relevant for children, who have proven receptive to interactions with social robots. To reach learning and therapeutic goals, a number of issues need to be investigated, notably the design of an effective child-robot interaction (cHRI) to ensure the child remains engaged in the relationship and that educational goals are met. Typically, current cHRI research experiments focus on a single type of interaction activity (e.g. a game). However, these can suffer from a lack of adaptation to the child, or from an increasingly repetitive nature of the activity and interaction. In this paper, we motivate and propose a practicable solution to this issue: an adaptive robot able to switch between multiple activities within single interactions. We describe a system that embodies this idea, and present a case study in which diabetic children collaboratively learn with the robot about various aspects of managing their condition. We demonstrate the ability of our system to induce a varied interaction and show the potential of this approach both as an educational tool and as a research method for long-term cHRI.}, issn = {2163-0364}, doi = {10.5898/JHRI.5.1.Coninx}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5898/JHRI.5.1.Coninx}, author = {Coninx, Alexandre and Paul E. Baxter and Oleari, Elettra and Bellini, Sara and Bierman, Bert and Henkemans, Olivier Blanson and Lola Ca{\~n}amero and Cosi, Piero and Valentin Enescu and Espinoza, Raquel Ros and Antoine Hiolle and Remi Humbert and Kiefer, Bernd and Kruijff-Korbayov{\'a}, Ivana and Looije, Rosmarijn and Mosconi, Marco and Mark A. Neerincx and Giulio Paci and Patsis, Georgios and Pozzi, Clara and Sacchitelli, Francesca and Hichem Sahli and Alberto Sanna and Sommavilla, Giacomo and Tesser, Fabio and Yiannis Demiris and Tony Belpaeme} } @inproceedings {2015, title = {Let{\textquoteright}s Be Friends: Perception of a Social Robotic Companion for children with T1DM}, booktitle = {Proc. New Friends 2015}, year = {2015}, note = {Download full proceedings (PDF)}, month = {10/2015}, pages = {32{\textendash}33}, address = {Almere, The Netherlands}, abstract = {We describe the social characteristics of a robot developed to support children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) in the process of education and care. We evaluated the perception of the robot at a summer camp where diabetic children aged 10-14 experienced the robot in group interactions. Children in the intervention condition additionally interacted with it also individually, in one-to-one sessions featuring several game-like activities. These children perceived the robot significantly more as a friend than those in the control group. They also readily engaged with it in dialogues about their habits related to healthy lifestyle as well as personal experiences concerning diabetes. This indicates that the one-on-one interactions added a special quality to the relationship of the children with the robot.}, url = {https://mheerink.home.xs4all.nl/pdf/ProceedingsNF2015-3.pdf}, author = {Kruijff-Korbayov{\'a}, Ivana and Oleari, Elettra and Pozzi, Clara and Sacchitelli, Francesca and Bagherzadhalimi, Anahita and Bellini, Sara and Kiefer, Bernd and Racioppa, Stefania and Coninx, Alexandre and Paul E. Baxter and Bierman, Bert and Henkemans, Olivier Blanson and Mark A. Neerincx and Rosemarijn Looije and Yiannis Demiris and Espinoza, Raquel Ros and Mosconi, Marco and Cosi, Piero and Remi Humbert and Lola Ca{\~n}amero and Hichem Sahli and Joachim de Greeff and James Kennedy and Robin Read and Lewis, Matthew and Antoine Hiolle and Giulio Paci and Sommavilla, Giacomo and Tesser, Fabio and Athanasopoulos, Georgios and Patsis, Georgios and Verhelst, Werner and Alberto Sanna and Tony Belpaeme} } @inproceedings {2012, title = {Children{\textquoteright}s Adaptation in Multi-session Interaction with a Humanoid Robot}, booktitle = {2012 IEEE RO-MAN: The 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication}, year = {2012}, note = {Download}, pages = {351{\textendash}357}, publisher = {IEEE}, organization = {IEEE}, abstract = {This work presents preliminary observations from a study of children (N=19, age 5{\textendash}12) interacting in multiple sessions with a humanoid robot in a scenario involving game activities. The main purpose of the study was to see how their perception of the robot, their engagement, and their enjoyment of the robot as a companion evolve across multiple interactions, separated by one-two weeks. However, an interesting phenomenon was observed during the experiment: most of the children soon adapted to the behaviors of the robot, in terms of speech timing, speed and tone, verbal input formulation, nodding, gestures, etc. We describe the experimental setup and the system, and our observations and preliminary analysis results, which open interesting questions for further research.}, issn = {1944-9445}, doi = {10.1109/ROMAN.2012.6343778}, url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6343778/}, author = {Nalin, Marco and Baroni, Ilaria and Kruijff-Korbayov{\'a}, Ivana and Lola Ca{\~n}amero and Lewis, Matthew and Aryel Beck and Cuay{\'a}huitl, Heriberto and Alberto Sanna} }