Analysis of children: humanoid robot interaction to support social skills development

Abstract

Children robot interaction1 has shown benefits in academic or medical applications. We started a long-term project with the goal of modifying some social behaviors on disabled children using a humanoid robot that implements tasks that a therapist does frequently; this paper reports the initial stage of our project, it focuses on the analysis, design and test of children - NAO robot interactions by taking into account a repertoire of basic social behaviors: rapport establishment, attention acquisition, imitation behavior and follow-up of instructions. Preliminary results show that interactions with regular children (aged from 5 to 12 years old) are validated and ready to be used as a promising alternative to support social skills development in disabled children.