ObjectiveTo review research on social robots to help children in healthcare contexts in order to describe the current state of the literature and explore future directions for research and practice.DesignScoping review.Data sourcesEngineering Village, IEEE Xplore, Medline, PsycINFO and Scopus databases were searched up until 10 July 2017. Only publications written in English were considered. Identified publications were initially screened by title and abstract, and the full texts of remaining publications were then subsequently screened.Eligibility criteriaPublications were included if they were journal articles, conference proceedings or conference proceedings published as monographs that described the conceptualisation, development, testing or evaluation of social robots for use with children with any mental or physical health condition or disability. Publications on autism exclusively, robots for use with children without identified health conditions, physically assistive or mechanical robots, non-physical hardware robots and surgical robots were excluded.ResultsSeventy-three publications were included in the review, of which 50 included user studies with a range of samples. Most were feasibility studies with small sample sizes, suggesting that the robots were generally accepted. At least 26 different robots were used, with many of these still in development. The most commonly used robot was NAO. The evidence quality was low, with only one randomised controlled trial and a limited number of experimental designs.ConclusionsSocial robots hold significant promise and potential to help children in healthcare contexts, but higher quality research is required with experimental designs and larger sample sizes.

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Abstract-This paper presents a study on measuring (1) how children experience a pet robot, (2) how they play with it and (3) how children's perceptions on and interaction with pet robots are interrelated. The study features different types of subjective and objective techniques to assess the degree of perceived social entity from self-reports (i.e. questionnaires) and observed behavior. Three short questionnaires and an ad hoc code scheme of 15 low-level micro-behaviors were developed. 28 scholars aged 8 to 12 were observed at school during a play period with a Pleo robot and asked to answer the questionnaires. We found that the different questionnaire based methods were in line each other. Therefore, anyone of them can be used to measure the experience of a social entity. Play analyses showed that the two most prevalent behaviors were clearly social: petting the robot and showing it objects to engage in interaction. Moreover, children spent on average less than one per cent of the session time treating the robot as an artifact. However, significant covariation between the experience of a social entity and observed behavior could not be established.

Social robots and their interactions with children are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the emergence of child-robot relationships as a likely result. However, adequate measurement instruments that tap into concepts associated with child-robot relationship formation are scarce. We aimed to develop three measures that can be used to assess children’s closeness to, trust in, and perceived social support from, a social robot. We established the validity and reliability of these measures among 87 Dutch children aged 7 to 11 years old. Because of their shortness, the measures can efficiently be applied by scholars aiming to gain insight into the general process of child-robot relationship formation and its specific sub-processes, that is, the emergence of closeness, trust, and perceived social support.

Social robots and the Internet of Toys present key technologies in children's future life.Based on Winfield (2012), we conceptualize the relationship between social robots and smart/connected toys with six characteristics: interactivity, energy, sensors, software-control, movement, and embodiment. These characteristics, in turn, help to classify social robots and smart/connected toys along three dimensions (i.e., horizontal, vertical, and spatial integration), which suggests that social robots and smart/connected toys differ gradually rather than categorically. We identify three common theoretical (absence or heterogeneity of theory, lacking developmental perspective, insufficient attention to intercultural differences) and three methodological issues (lack of standardized measures, study design issues, dominance of cross-sectional studies) that research on both social robots and the Internet of Toys needs to address.