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Probo is a huggable animal-like robot, designed to act as a social interface. It will be used as a platform to study human robot interaction (HRI) while employing human-like social cues and communication modalities. The robot has a fully actuated head, with 20 degrees of freedom, capable of showing facial expressions and making eyecontact. The basic facial expressions are represented as a vector in the 2-dimensional emotion space based on Russel's circomplex model of affect (Posner et al. in Dev. Psychopathol. 17(03):715-734, 2005). The recognition of the underlying emotions based on the robot's facial expressions were tested in different user studies and compared with similar robotic projects. This paper describes the concepts of the robot Probo and the ability to express emotional states.

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Social robots are thought to be motivating tools in play tasks with children with autism spectrum disorders. Thirty children with autism were included using a repeated measurements design. It was investigated if the children's interaction with a human differed from the interaction with a social robot during a play task. Also, it was examined if the two conditions differed in their ability to elicit interaction with a human accompanying the child during the task. Interaction of the children with both partners did not differ apart from the eye-contact. Participants had more eye-contact with the social robot compared to the eye-contact with the human. The conditions did not differ regarding the interaction elicited with the human accompanying the child.

Professor, ‡Researcher, Department of Clinical and Lifespan Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, †Opvang vzw afdeling Brabant, Brussels, Belgium A B S T R AC TFoster children often have behavioural problems. Behavioural problems influence the level of parenting stress and can lead to a breakdown. In this study, parenting behaviour of foster mothers is mapped, and the influence of behavioural problems and parenting stress on the parenting behaviour 2 years later is examined. Data of behavioural problems, family stress and parenting were gathered from 49 foster mothers. Problem behaviour has a direct negative impact on parenting and leads to less support and more negative control. It also results in more parenting stress. Foster parents need to be trained aiming at preventing ineffective parenting. The well-being of foster parents needs to be guarded. Higher levels of parenting stress lead to less effective parenting.