Are robots vegan? Unexpected behaviours in child-robot interactions and their design implications

Abstract

A robot's unexpected behaviors, such as a social faux pas or system errors, affect how a child perceives or interacts with the robot. In this study, we conducted two child-robot interaction workshops on active reading in a museum of modern art, and observed the behavior and attitudes of 18 children from two age groups (6-7 yrs and 10-12 yrs). The video and audio data from this event was analyzed to observe how children in a group respond to the robot's unexpected behaviors. We extracted six different types of robot's surprising behaviors: robot's personality, movement malfunctions, inconsistent behavior, mispronunciation, delays and freezing. We analyzed how children in the younger and the older age groups respond to each of these behaviours, and what are the similarities and differences between the two groups. Based on this analysis, we suggest guidelines for designing age-appropriate learning interactions with social robots.