“It’s Important to Think of Pepper as a Teaching Aid or Resource External to the Classroom”: A Social Robot in a School for Autistic Children

Abstract

For a period of 3 weeks in June 2021, we embedded a social robot (Softbank Pepper) in a Special Educational Needs (SEN) school for autistic children. The robot’s behaviours and integration into the school were co-designed with the children and teachers, with a focus on improving the well-being of the pupils. Using a mix-method approach, we studied the robot’s adoption over the course of the study, and the impact of the robot’s presence on the children well-being and the school ecosystem. We found that the robot successfully integrated within the school; it fostered and maintained a steady level of interactions (330 interactions, 16 h of continuous use over 3 weeks) with a small yet meaningful group of children with a positive impact on their well-being; and it led to a nuanced conversation with the students and school staff about the role and impact of such a social technology in a SEN school.

A case study in designing trustworthy interactions: implications for socially assistive robotics

“…Some design practices implicate that the guidelines are not ideal for the demanded functions of a social robot. Lemaignan et al (2021Lemaignan et al ( , 2022) applied UNICEF's Policy Guidance on AI for Children (UNICEF, 2021) when designing Pepper robots for autistic children. They appreciated the solid ethical framing, but questioned whether such guidance would be appropriate and applicable to embodied AI systems like SARs.…”