Social Robots to Encourage Play for Children with Physical Disabilities: Learning from Family Units

Abstract

Children with disabilities have fewer opportunities and lower mo-tivation for play, impacting their cognitive and social develop-ment. Leveraging co-design and participatory design we plan to conduct a study with children with physical disabilities and their families to learn the requirements, concerns, barriers, and opin-ions about using social robots to facilitate play in children with physical disabilities. Combining the insights gathered from the families with knowledge from literature, we hope to outline the requirements needed to direct future research with a grounded understanding of the practical and social landscape these social robots would need to be designed within.