Exploring Elementary Students’ Perceptions of Robots: The Draw-A-Robot Test

Abstract

This study explored elementary school students' perceptions of robots via drawing analysis. A total of 100 sixth graders from China participated in this Draw-a-robot Test. A coding checklist with four categories and forty-two subcategories was developed to analyze the features of students' drawings. Data analysis reveals: (1) both male and female students in sixth grade depicted special robots most frequently rather than industry robots; (2) the most common activities robots did were doing housework or navigating/guiding; (3) more than half of the drawings did not have any people involved; (4) the robots were mostly located at home or restaurant/canteen; (5) there was also a difference in the depiction of features of different categories between male and female students' drawings. The findings yielded in this study have practical implications for the development and implementation of future robot education outreach efforts.