Social Robots to Support Child and Family Care: A Dutch Use Case

Abstract

Child and family care professionals in the Netherlands are facing challenges including high workloads. Technological support could be beneficial in this context, e.g. for education, motivation and guidance of the children. For example, the Dutch Child and Family Center explores the possibilities of social robot assistance in their regular care pathways. To study the use of social robots in this broad context, we started by drafting three example scenarios based on the expertise of child care professionals. During an exploration phase, we are identifying key design and application requirements through focus groups with child care professionals and parents. Later stages of our research, the testing phase, will focus on testing these requirements via scenario-based design and child-robot interaction experiments in real-world contexts to further shape the application of social robots in various child and family care settings. CCS CONCEPTS• Computer systems organization → Robotics; • Human-centered computing → User studies.

The Effect of Simple Emotional Gesturing in a Socially Assistive Robot on Child's Engagement at a Group Vaccination Day

“…Earlier research calls for an appropriate design of SARs in combination with personalization [1,50], especially when SARs are used with children [53]. Another requirement is that a SAR should be able to provide a comfortable experience for children, since this forms the basis for trust and bonding [37]. A variety of social robots have been used as a SAR, for example the NAO robot, RP-7 Remote Presence Robot, Keepon, COLOLO, and Pleo [27].…”

“…A social robot can take on the role of a peer [47] making it less scary to talk to compared to an (adult) healthcare worker. In this way, a social robot can be used to break the ice between child and healthcare professional [37]. Additionally, in some medical settings such as group vaccinations, healthcare professionals lack the time for reaching out to all children.…”

Lessons Learned About Designing and Conducting Studies From HRI Experts

“…For children, creative methods like those suggested for introducing robots, such as drawing, storytelling, and theatre play can help them express themselves. It might be difficult to go beyond the experiences that the target group is familiar with (e.g., when designing a robot, the target group may not imagine a robot able to express emotions if they think that a robot cannot emote (Neerincx et al, 2021). Creative methods can also stimulate out-of-the-box thinking.…”

Symbiotic Child Emotional Support with Social Robots and Temporal Knowledge Graphs

“…Experts in youth care and families have expressed the need to increase knowledge regarding the risks and opportunities of employing social robots in youth healthcare practices. Consequentially, scientific empirical studies are beginning to advance robot-supported ES programs for youth to establish regulated and safe practices [Neerincx et al, 2021, Moerman et al, 2019. Neerincx et al [2021] for example, evaluated the robot-child interaction as a means to break the ice, run standardized tests, and play educational games in settings such as hospitals and schools.…”

“…Consequentially, scientific empirical studies are beginning to advance robot-supported ES programs for youth to establish regulated and safe practices [Neerincx et al, 2021, Moerman et al, 2019. Neerincx et al [2021] for example, evaluated the robot-child interaction as a means to break the ice, run standardized tests, and play educational games in settings such as hospitals and schools. Several other studies have proposed methods to establish empa-thy in the child-robot interaction to aid social presence, engagement, and social support (e.g., [Leite et al, 2014, Ligthart et al, 2018, Belpaeme et al, 2012).…”