Blog post
Making new robot friends: Understanding children’s relationships with social robots
Westlund JMK
Published in mit media lab: Personal Robots Group blog, June 13, 2017
Link to blog: media.mit.edu/posts/making-new-robot-friends/"Hi, my name is Mox! This story begins in 2013, in a preschool in Boston, where I hide, with laptop, headphones, and microphone, in a little kitchenette. Ethernet cables trail across the hall to the classroom, where 17 children eagerly await their turn to talk to a small fluffy robot."
In this engaging blogpost, the author describes a robot used to explore the nature of relationships children build this social, teleoperated machine. In playtests with children, the author learns they form an understanding of robots that differ from the relationship with the robot’s human operator; from pets, from inanimate possessions and from people. Adult ontologies are not applied by children: person or machine, real or imaginary; no condition excludes the possibility of a friend. Characteristics like expressiveness and responsiveness are found to contribute to connection and learning. Robots can ask questions that encourage the child to greater engagement in a story and cue parents to ask similar questions.
Finally, the author expresses concerns about the ethics of providing engaged machines to children and issues a call to engagement in ‘roboethics’.
Research proposal: Transparency, Teleoperation, and Children’s Understanding of Social Robots, Westlund JMK & Breazeal C
Link to research proposal ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7451888/