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arXiv · 2105.00215

Child-Robot Interaction Studies During COVID-19 Pandemic

Pinar Uluer·Hatice Kose·Agnieszka Landowska·Tatjana Zorcec·Ben Robins·Duygun Erol Barkana
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Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic affected our lives deeply, just like everyone else, the children also suffered from the restrictions due to COVID-19 affecting their education and social interactions with others, being restricted from play areas and schools for a long time. Although social robots provide a promising solution to support children in their education, healthcare and social interaction with others, the precautions due to COVID-19 also introduced new constraints in the social robotics research. In this paper, we will discuss the benefits and challenges encountered in child-robot interaction due to COVID-19 based on two user studies. The first study involves children with hearing disabilities, and Pepper humanoid robot to support their audiometry tests. The second study includes the child-sized humanoid robot Kaspar and interaction games with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

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Pinar Uluer, Hatice Kose, Agnieszka Landowska, Tatjana Zorcec, Ben Robins, Duygun Erol Barkana. 2021-05-01. Child-Robot Interaction Studies During COVID-19 Pandemic. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.00215

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