Robot-Mediated Interaction Between Children and Older Adults: A Pilot Study for Greeting Tasks in Nursery Schools

Abstract

Robot-mediated interaction may be one of the best approaches to overcome the implementation-related limitations of face-to-face interaction between children and older adults. However, there has been little research about development or demonstration of teleoperated social robot systems that could be implemented in nurseries. We report a preliminary experiment wherein older adults greet nursery pupils on their way to and from school using a teleoperated social robot. The results suggest that using teleoperated robots in dialogue-based tasks motivate the children to interact with the robot, and it increases the probability of learning from the tasks. Further, the older adult teleoperators enjoyed the task and wanted to continue the same. In addition, the teleoperators could inherit the close relationships built up by the previous teleoperator even if the teleoperator was replaced. This study provides a starting point for further research on technology-mediated interactions between children and older adults.