The study presented in this paper explored people's perceptions and attitudes towards the idea of a future robot companion for the home. A human-centred approach was adopted using questionnaires and human-robot interaction trials to derive data from 28 adults. Results indicated that a large proportion of participants were in favour of a robot companion and saw the potential role as being an assistant, machine or servant. Few wanted a robot companion to be a friend. Household tasks were preferred to child/animal care tasks. Humanlike communication was desirable for a robot companion, whereas humanlike behaviour and appearance were less essential. Results are discussed in relation to future research directions for the development of robot companions.

The prevalence of direct and relational bullying and their differential relationship to behaviour problems in young primary school children was investigated. Individual interviews were conducted with 1982 children aged 6 9 years (mean age 7.6 years) and 1639 parents completed the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire regarding behaviour problems of their children. Of the 1639 children with both data sets, 4.3% were direct bullies, 39.8 % victims, and 10.2% both bullied and were victimised frequently (bully/victims). The rates for relational bullying were 1.1% bullies, 37.9% victims, and 5.9% bully/victims. All children involved in direct bullying had significantly increased total behaviour problems, hyperactivity, conduct problems, and peer problem scores, and lower prosocial behaviour scores compared to those not involved in bullying (neutrals). Findings were similar for relational bullying involvement and behaviour problems for bully/victims and victims but less pronounced. Relational bullies had the lowest behaviour problem scores while being rated the least prosocially inclined children, consistent with the concept of a cool manipulator. Overall, direct bully/victims and children who were involved in both direct and relational bullying behaviour had the highest rates of behaviour problems. No relationship between victimisation and increased emotional problems were found. Those involved in bullying behaviour who show externalising and hyperactivity problems in primary school may be at increased risk for persistent conduct problems. Different interventions may be needed for those involved in relational bullying only, both direct and relational bullying, and those with additional behaviour problems.

In the present study we investigated humanrobot and robot-human approach distances. We found that subjects' personality profiles influence personal spatial zones in human-robot interaction experiments. We tested two hypotheses: First, we predicted that approach distances preferred by humans when interacting with a robot would be comparable to those preferred when humans interact socially with each other. Our experiments involving humans interacting with a mobile robot confirm this hypothesis. However, surprisingly, a large minority of subjects in the experiments took up positions which were significantly closer, suggesting that they were not treating the robot as a 'social entity'. We then tested the hypothesis that common personality factors exist which could be used to predict subjects' likely approach distance preferences. The subjects' personalities were assessed using several traits from the threefactor Eysenck personality model. Further analysis of the data identified four new factors, different from Eysenck's model, tentatively labeled "Proactiveness", "Social Reluctance", "Timidity" and "Nervousness". When testing for correlations between approach distances and personality data, "Proactiveness" correlates with social distance, i.e. subjects that score higher on this factor come less close to the robot. We discuss the potential suitability of personality factors to predict approach distances in human-robot interaction experiments.

The main aim of this study was to confirm the have also conducted similar EiRT trials with human sized findings from previous pilot studies that results obtained from robots including Dario et al. [7], Severinson-Eklundh et al. the same Human Robot Interaction (HRI) scenarios in trials [8], Kanda et al. [9] and Hinds et al. [10]. However, most of using both video-based and live methodologies were these HiRI trials to date typically are characterised by comparable. We investigated how a robot should approach relatively small sample sizes and are highly exploratory. HRI human subjects in various scenarios relevant to the robot

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