Mike Ligthart
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Social AI, Faculty Member
Robots are increasingly being used in education. But children's motivation to interact with a robot often disappears once the novelty wears off. As a result, learning effects are short-lived and offer little added value for education. A... more
Robots are increasingly being used in education. But children's motivation to interact with a robot often disappears once the novelty wears off. As a result, learning effects are short-lived and offer little added value for education. A new, more sustainable, motivation for children to keep interacting could be that they feel a meaningful relationship with a robot. However, little is known about how robots can stimulate relationship building. For this reason, several workshops with child-robot researchers and practitioners (i.e., robot software developers, robot vendors, school robot facilitators and trainers, pedagogical experts) were organized to identify factors (from academic literature and field experiences) that potentially stimulate relationship formation between children and robots. This opportunity map presents the most important insights to inspire researchers and practitioners in the educational field to further develop, test and implement these factors.
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While interacting with a social robot, children have a need to express themselves and have their expressions acknowledged by the robot. A need that is often unaddressed by the robot, due to its limitations in understanding the expressions... more
While interacting with a social robot, children have a need to express themselves and have their expressions acknowledged by the robot. A need that is often unaddressed by the robot, due to its limitations in understanding the expressions of children. To keep the child-robot interaction manageable the robot takes control, undermining children’s ability to co-regulate the interaction. Co-regulation is important for having a fulfilling social interaction. We developed a co-creation activity that aims to facilitate more co-regulation. Children are enabled to create sound effects, gestures, and light animations for the robot to use during their conversation. A crucial additional feature is that children are able to coordinate their involvement of the co-creation process. Results from a user study (N = 59 school children, 7-11 y.o.) showed that the co-creation activity successfully facilitated co-regulation by improving children’s agency. It also positively affected the acceptance of the...
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In this article we discuss two studies of children getting acquainted with an autonomous socially assistive robot. The success of the first encounter is key for a sustainable long-term supportive relationship. We provide four validated... more
In this article we discuss two studies of children getting acquainted with an autonomous socially assistive robot. The success of the first encounter is key for a sustainable long-term supportive relationship. We provide four validated behavior design elements that enable the robot to robustly get acquainted with the child. The first are five conversational patterns that allow children to comfortably self-disclose to the robot. The second is a reciprocation strategy that enables the robot to adequately respond to the children’s self-disclosures. The third is a ‘how to talk to me’ tutorial. The fourth is a personality profile for the robot that creates more rapport and comfort between the child and the robot. The designs were validated with two user studies (N1 = 30, N2 = 75, 8–11 years. o. children). The results furthermore showed similarities between how children form relationships with people and how children form relationships with robots. Most importantly, self-disclosure, and s...
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Objectives: Children with cancer often experience sleep problems, which are associated with many negative physical and psychological health outcomes, as well as with a lower quality of life. Therefore, interventions are strongly required... more
Objectives: Children with cancer often experience sleep problems, which are associated with many negative physical and psychological health outcomes, as well as with a lower quality of life. Therefore, interventions are strongly required to improve sleep in this population. We evaluated interactive education with respect to sleep hygiene with a social robot at a pediatric oncology outpatient clinic regarding the feasibility, experiences, and preliminary effectiveness. Methods: Researchers approached children (8 to 12 years old) who were receiving anticancer treatment and who were visiting the outpatient clinic with their parents during the two-week study period. The researchers completed observation forms regarding feasibility, and parents completed the Children’s Sleep Hygiene Scale before and two weeks after the educational regimen. The experiences of children and parents were evaluated in semi-structured interviews. We analyzed open answers by labeling each answer with a topic re...
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Nowadays, off-the-shelf social robots are used more frequently by the HRI community to research social interactions with different types of users across a range of domains such as education, retail, health care, public places and other... more
Nowadays, off-the-shelf social robots are used more frequently by the HRI community to research social interactions with different types of users across a range of domains such as education, retail, health care, public places and other domains. Everyone doing HRI research with end-users is invited to submit a case study to our workshop. We are particularly interested in case studies where things did not go as planned. Case studies describing research in the lab or in the wild are both welcome. Examples of unplanned experiences could include, but are not limited to, unexpected responses from the user, issues with the experimental setup or simply having challenges with transferring theory to the real world. In this workshop, we focus on off-the-shelf robots. In order to generalize and compare differences across multiple HRI domains and create common solutions, we will provide a template for your case study. We are interested in learning how such unexpected HRI results can be reported. In the workshop, we will discuss and study how failures are reported and be inspired to create a list of good ways to report failures, which can hopefully be inspiring for the HRI community.
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This research is the first study into the validation of the questionnaire instrument for evaluating human interaction with an artificial social agent. It involves crowd workers on an online crowdsourcing platform. They will be asked to... more
This research is the first study into the validation of the questionnaire instrument for evaluating human interaction with an artificial social agent. It involves crowd workers on an online crowdsourcing platform. They will be asked to use the questionnaire instrument to rate an interaction between an agent and a human user, which is displayed in a 30 second video clip. The result of this study will be analysed and used to examine the reliability of individual questionnaire items in the questionnaire instrument.
A study that involves experts to organize constructs (within seven categories resulted in the Study 1: Defining Categories) into groups.
This research is the second study into the validation of the questionnaire instrument for evaluating human interaction with an artificial social agent. It involves crowd workers on an online crowdsourcing platform. They will be asked to... more
This research is the second study into the validation of the questionnaire instrument for evaluating human interaction with an artificial social agent. It involves crowd workers on an online crowdsourcing platform. They will be asked to use the questionnaire instrument to rate an interaction between an agent and a human user, which is displayed in a 30 second video clip. The result of this study will be analysed and used to examine the associations of questionnaire items with the latent constructs, i.e. construct validity.
MyPAL is a digital diabetes diary that children can use to record their insulin use, carbohydrate<br> intake and blood glucose values as well as write something about their day and how they feel. With<br> that information the... more
MyPAL is a digital diabetes diary that children can use to record their insulin use, carbohydrate<br> intake and blood glucose values as well as write something about their day and how they feel. With<br> that information the children can more easily link their diabetes values, what they eat and how<br> they feel together. With this insight they can manage their insulin use and diet more efficiently.<br> Besides children also medical professionals, parents and researchers benefit from this<br> information. For example, a diabetes nurse can improve the treatment plan, parents can get a<br> better idea how their child is doing and researchers can investigate the relationship between food,<br> mood and blood glucose values more closely.<br>
Research Interests: Psychology and Avatar
In order to facilitate a sustainable long-term interaction between a child and a robot they need to get acquainted with one another. In this paper we discuss the foundation, the rationale, and the evaluation (N = 75) of our design for an... more
In order to facilitate a sustainable long-term interaction between a child and a robot they need to get acquainted with one another. In this paper we discuss the foundation, the rationale, and the evaluation (N = 75) of our design for an autonomous robot conversational partner that engages with Dutch children (8-11 y.o.) in a getting acquainted interaction. The main objective of the robot is to elicit children to self-disclose. Firstly, we discuss five interaction design patterns (IDPs) that proved to be successful in autonomously eliciting and processing self-disclosures. Secondly, we compared two robot behavior profiles. The behavior profiles can be relatively considered as being more and less energetic. We manipulated the movement speed, the speech rate and volume, the use of high/low energy language, waiting time before responding, and the order of high/low energy activities. Results show that the less energetic behavior profile significantly leads to more self-disclosure.
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Finding good behavioral styles to express robot trustworthiness will optimize the usage of robots. In previous research, motion fluency as behavioral style was studied. Smooth robot motions were compared with trembling robot motions. In a... more
Finding good behavioral styles to express robot trustworthiness will optimize the usage of robots. In previous research, motion fluency as behavioral style was studied. Smooth robot motions were compared with trembling robot motions. In a video experiment an effect of motion fluency on trust was found, while in an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) experiment, no effect was observed [1]. In this research, we explored the question whether the motion fluency effect is present in a short version of an IVE task and disappears when the task is longer. Results indicate this is not the case. Several explanations for this null-effect are discussed and several recommendations for further human-robot trust studies are provided.
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In this paper we reflect on the use of questionnaires as an evaluation tool in child-robot interaction research. We provide a case study containing eight user studies. While doing these user studies we ran into two major challenges:... more
In this paper we reflect on the use of questionnaires as an evaluation tool in child-robot interaction research. We provide a case study containing eight user studies. While doing these user studies we ran into two major challenges: violations of the constructs used in questionnaires and a ceiling effect in the responses of the children. These issues are caused by a combination of factors such as, but not limited to, misinterpretations of questions, response biases, and the novelty effect. A first lesson learned is that a proper design of a questionnaire, and how questions are asked and answered, is essential. In this paper we discuss two questionnaire methods we have been developing that potentially could circumvent some of the issues. A second lesson learned is that user studies could benefit if they reflect the long-term nature of the child-robot interaction.
We are developing a social robot that should autonomously interact long-term with pediatric oncology patients. The child and the robot need to get acquainted with one another before a long-term interaction can take place. We designed five... more
We are developing a social robot that should autonomously interact long-term with pediatric oncology patients. The child and the robot need to get acquainted with one another before a long-term interaction can take place. We designed five interaction design patterns and two sets of robot behaviors to structure a getting acquainted interaction. We discuss the results of a user study (N = 75, 8–11 y.o.) evaluating these patterns and robot behaviors. Specifically, we are exploring whether the children successfully got acquainted with the robot and to what extent the children bonded with the robot.
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We present a discovery-based, first version, explicit model of social interaction that provides a basis for measuring the quality of interaction of a human user with a social robot. The two core elements of the social interaction model... more
We present a discovery-based, first version, explicit model of social interaction that provides a basis for measuring the quality of interaction of a human user with a social robot. The two core elements of the social interaction model are engagement and co-regulation. Engagement emphasizes the qualitative nature of social interaction and the fact that a user needs to be drawn into the interaction with the robot. Co-regulation emphasizes the interaction process and the fact that a user and a robot need to be acting together. We argue that the quality of social interaction with a robot can be measured in terms of how efficiently engagement and co-regulation are established and maintained during the interaction and how satisfied the user is with the interaction.
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We studied the preference for a pet robot to be taken to hospital by interviewing Dutch primary school children and medical professionals. Although boys and girls show a variation in their answers a clear preference for the dog is found,... more
We studied the preference for a pet robot to be taken to hospital by interviewing Dutch primary school children and medical professionals. Although boys and girls show a variation in their answers a clear preference for the dog is found, closely followed by cat. Dinosaur Pleo, which is at this moment the most widely used because it can be kept very hygienic due to its skin, is strongly disliked by girls and about a third of the boys. Although the choice was made based on pictures, these results indicate that it might be worthwhile to develop a dog pet, seal or cat robot which adheres to high hygienic standards.
Children are eager to anthropomorphize (ascribe human attributes to) social robots. As a consequence they expect a more unconstrained, substantive and useful interaction with the robot than is possible with the current state-of-the art.... more
Children are eager to anthropomorphize (ascribe human attributes to) social robots. As a consequence they expect a more unconstrained, substantive and useful interaction with the robot than is possible with the current state-of-the art. In this paper we reflect on several of our user studies and investigate the form and role of expectations in child-robot interaction. We have found that the effectiveness of the social assistance of the robot is negatively influenced by misaligned expectations. We propose three strategies that have to be worked out for the management of expectations in child-robot interaction: 1) be aware of and analyze children's expectations, 2) educate children, and 3) acknowledge robots are (perceived as) a new kind of ‘living’ entity besides humans and animals that we need to make responsible for managing expectations.
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Selecting the suitable form of a robot, i.e. physical or virtual, for a task is not straightforward. The choice for a physical robot is not self-evident when the task is not physical but entirely social in nature. Results from previous... more
Selecting the suitable form of a robot, i.e. physical or virtual, for a task is not straightforward. The choice for a physical robot is not self-evident when the task is not physical but entirely social in nature. Results from previous studies comparing robots with different body types are found to be inconclusive. We performed a user study to provide a more sound comparison between a virtual and physical robot operating in a social setting. Besides body type, we manipulated the sociability of the robot. Our results show that 1) user preferences indicate that robot sociability is more important than body type for selecting a robot in a non-physical social setting, and 2) the user's attitude towards robots is an important moderating factor influencing robot preference.