Effect of Different Adaptations by a Robot on Children's Long-term Engagement: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

One of the known challenges in Children Robot Interaction (cHRI) is to sustain children's engagement for long-term interactions with robots. Researchers have hypothesised that robots that can adapt to children's affective states, and can also learn from the environment, resulting in sustained engagement during cHRI. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with three groups of children who played a snakes and ladders game with the NAO robot. The NAO performed 1) Game based adaptations, 2) Emotion based adaptations and 3) Memory based adaptation. The purpose of this study was to find which particular condition resulted in maintaining engagement over a certain period of time. Our results show that adaptations performed by the robot, in general, were able to maintain long-term engagement. However, we did not find any significant effect of one adaptation over another on engagement, social presence and perceived support.