Kids Love Their Robo Pals, After All

With robots set to assume more and more positions within society, most of the chatter surrounding our mechanical friends is how they'll replace everyone in the workforce. But a recent study in Computers in Human Behaviourby researchers out of Tilburg University in Holland, suggests kids love their robo-friends.

Of course, social robots are already showing up in some very real places, like interviewing military personnel or caring for elderly people. While those types of robots are more interactive than their industrial counterparts, they still tend to be assigned some practical roles. Studies of robot-human relations often focus on how adults feel about robots that are performing decidedly job-like tasks.

The central question of the study was not whether or not a robot provoked more social reaction than a toy, but whether playing with a robot was more similar to playing alone, or playing with a friend.

But before testing they needed to find the right bot. Because, logically, a good robot study requires a good robot. Children, like adults, prefer robots with recognizable human or animal shapes, but not realistic replicas. The researchers settled on the Philips iCat, a feline robot in cartoonish yellow, with the heavy eyelids and smug smile of Garfield.

The study asked children, ages eight and twelve, to play a simple card game where they guess whether the next card in a sequence will be higher or lower than the last. The game was played on a computer screen alone, or with either a friend or the iCat seated beside them. The iCat expressions or speech could be controlled by the researchers to ensure it prompted questions and encouraged the player to talk about the game, saying things like "I think the next card is higher, what do you think?"

Before beginning the experiments the research group added an additional dimension. Studies of adults interacting with robots had shown that social reactions and level of trust towards robots varied widely depending on the country where the study was conducted. A Korean study suggested that cultures emphasizing a collective or group social identity were more likely than individualistic cultures to accept robots as social partners.

With this in mind, the researchers conducted identical game sessions in Holland and Pakistan, testing an individualistic and collective culture, respectively.

After playing, children were evaluated by the "funometer", a component of the social science package "The Fun Toolkit v3" which also includes the "smileyometer", the "fun sorter", and the "again again table". The tools are pictorial and object based versions of the sort of "rank your enjoyment from 1-5," kinds of surveys that researchers ask adults.

The children were also recorded on video. Independent observers were shown cropped versions of the videos, where it was unclear whether the child was playing with a partner, and asked to identify nonverbal cues of success or failure.

According to the funometer, playing with the iCat was twice as much fun than playing alone. The adult observers were also able to identify successful or unsuccessful games more often when the child was playing with the iCat, suggesting that the non-verbal cues of a child playing with a robot are similar to those observed in a social situation with a friend.

In one clip a Pakistani girl in a school uniform jumps for joy at a successful guess as the iCat's eyes bulge with surprise, in another a little Dutch boy affectionately strokes the face of a despondent iCat, comforting it after a failed game.

The cultural component of the study is less clear. The Pakistani children reported having more fun, and were more expressive in general, celebrating more and complaining to the adults that the iCat should be happier when winning. But both groups of children showed similar trends in terms of fun, and satisfaction.

While the study shows that between playing alone and playing with a friend a robot most resembles a friend—children still have a clear idea a robot isn't the same as their human friends. In none of the evaluations did the robot score as high as playing with a friend. Interestingly, though, children from both groups were willing to hit other children, but far more respectful to the iCat.