When you are young, (robot's) looks matter. Developmental changes in the desired properties of a robot friend

Abstract

Seeing the world through the eyes of a child is always difficult. Designing a robot that might be liked and accepted by young users is therefore particularly complicated. We have investigated children's opinions on which features are most important in an interactive robot during a popular scientific event where we exhibited the iCub humanoid robot to a mixed public of various ages. From the observation of the participants' reactions to various robot demonstrations and from a dedicated ranking game, we found that children's requirements for a robot companion change sensibly with age. Before 9 years of age children give more relevance to a human-like appearance, while older kids and adults pay more attention to robot action skills. Additionally, the possibility to see and interact with a robot has an impact on children's judgments, especially convincing the youngest to consider also perceptual and motor abilities in a robot, rather than just its shape. These results suggest that robot design needs to take into account the different prior beliefs that children and adults might have when they see a robot with a human-like shape.