Let Them Have Bubbles! Filling Gaps in Toy-Like Behaviors for Child-Robot Interaction

Abstract

Robot-mediated interventions are one promising and novel approach for encouraging motor exploration in young children, but knowledge about the effectiveness of toy-like features for child-robot interaction is limited. We were interested in understanding the characteristics of current toys to inform the design of interactive abilities for assistive robots. This work first provides a systematic review of toy characteristics in <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$n=154$</tex> Fisher-Price products and then analyzes the effectiveness of common and uncommon toy-like behaviors from our custom assistive robot. Toy review results showed that light and sound features were significantly more common than bubbles, wheels, and self-propulsion. Exploratory play sessions with our assistive robot showed that bubbles were significantly more successful at encouraging child motion than other robot behaviors. Further, all studied robot behaviors demonstrated the capability to encourage child motion. The products of this work can inform the efforts of human-robot interaction and child development experts who study child mobility interventions.