In this digital age social robots will increasingly be used for educational purposes, such as second language tutoring. In this perspective article, we propose a number of design features to develop a child-friendly social robot that can effectively support children in second language learning, and we discuss some technical challenges for developing these. The features we propose include choices to develop the robot such that it can act as a peer to motivate the child during second language learning and build trust at the same time, while still being more knowledgeable than the child and scaffolding that knowledge in adult-like manner. We also believe that the first impressions children have about robots are crucial for them to build trust and common ground, which would support child-robot interactions in the long term. We therefore propose a strategy to introduce the robot in a safe way to toddlers. Other features relate to the ability to adapt to individual children’s language proficiency, respond contingently, both temporally and semantically, establish joint attention, use meaningful gestures, provide effective feedback and monitor children’s learning progress. Technical challenges we observe include automatic speech recognition (ASR) for children, reliable object recognition to facilitate semantic contingency and establishing joint attention, and developing human-like gestures with a robot that does not have the same morphology humans have. We briefly discuss an experiment in which we investigate how children respond to different forms of feedback the robot can give.

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.

This study aimed to explore technological and interpersonal trust in interactions between children and social robots. Specifically, we focused on whether children distinguish between these two types of trust and whether the two constitute independent constructs or interact. Using an exploratory approach, we analyzed the explanations 87 children, aged 7 to 11 years, offered for the degree to which they indicated to trust a robot with which they had just interacted. Our results suggest that children distinguished between technological and interpersonal trust in a robot. Three main categories of answers could be identified: answers relating to technological trust, those indicating the presence of interpersonal trust, and a third category in which children referred to technological properties of robots as a reason for the existence of interpersonal trust. We discuss these findings in light of the development of child-robot relationships and the design of future child-robot interaction studies. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing~Empirical studies in HCI • Human-centered computing~User studies • Human-centered computing~HCI theory, concepts and models • Human-centered computing~Field studies