13-year-olds approach human-robot interaction like adults

Abstract

Robots are at the evolution stage that will bring them to interact with humans in daily activities. This will lead to a direct contact with all the members of a household. It is important therefore to understand whether a robot behavior designed for adults could fit also the needs of their younger relatives. In particular, in this work we investigate whether the acceptance and basic understanding of robot behaviors changes between the onset of adolescence and adulthood. With a series of video-based tests we address three different aspects of the interaction: a) the a priori expectations of the prospective users on the most appropriate features of an interactive robot; b) their subjective preferences about a humanoid robot verbal and non-verbal behavior in a demonstration task; and c) the quantitative effect of robot gaze and hand motion on the ability of its human partner to understand its goal. The results show a remarkable similarity between teenagers and adults in all the subjective and quantitative metrics considered, suggesting that a robot behavior designed for adults would be probably effective also in the interaction with 13-year-olds. Our findings also underline the high relevance of an appropriate design of robot gaze direction, as both age groups relied substantially on this implicit cue in their understanding of robot goals.