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Children's Expectations and Strategies in Interacting with a Wizard of Oz Robot

Published: 07 December 2015 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of children's interactions with an early prototype of a robot that is being designed for deployment in early learning centres. 23 children aged 2-6 interacted with the prototype, consisting of a pair of tablets embedded in a flat and vaguely humanoid form. We used a Wizard of Oz (WoZ) technique to control a synthesized voice that delivered predefined statements and questions, and a tablet mounted as a head that displayed animated eyes. The children's interactions with the robot and with the adult experimenter were video recorded and analysed in order to identify some of the children's expectations of the robot's behaviour and capabilities, and to observe their strategies for interacting with a speaking and minimally animated artificial agent. We found a surprising breadth in children's reactions, expectations and strategies (as evidenced by their behaviour) and a noteworthy tolerance for the robot's occasionally awkward behaviour.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)Wizards in the Middle: An Approach to Comparing Humans and Robots*2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900655(329-336)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2022
  • (2021)Qualitative Research in HRI: A Review and TaxonomyInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-020-00723-z13:7(1689-1709)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2021
  • (2017)Robot-Assisted Therapy for Learning and Social Interaction of Children with Autism Spectrum DisorderRobotics10.3390/robotics60100046:1(4)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2017

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    OzCHI '15: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction
    December 2015
    691 pages
    ISBN:9781450336734
    DOI:10.1145/2838739
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 07 December 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. Children
    2. Design
    3. Ethnography
    4. Interaction
    5. Social Robot

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    OzCHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 47 of 97 submissions, 48%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

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    View all
    • (2022)Wizards in the Middle: An Approach to Comparing Humans and Robots*2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900655(329-336)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2022
    • (2021)Qualitative Research in HRI: A Review and TaxonomyInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-020-00723-z13:7(1689-1709)Online publication date: 20-Feb-2021
    • (2017)Robot-Assisted Therapy for Learning and Social Interaction of Children with Autism Spectrum DisorderRobotics10.3390/robotics60100046:1(4)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2017

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