Kids bond with robot

What do little kids make of robots in their classroom?

Japanese and Californian scientists can tell you, because they put a clever robot in a San Diego classroom of toddlers for nearly half a year.

The children were exposed to a 70-centimetre-tall, Japanese state-of-the-art humanoid named QRIO, for about an hour a day, off and on over five months. The scientists chose one or two-year- olds for their experiment because at that age the kids had no preconceived notions of robots.

The robot could do many clever things on its own, including tell stories, but a human operator sometimes helped it to walk or turn its head in a certain direction, dance, sit down, stand up, lie down, make hand gestures and giggle. Each session ended when the robot sensed low battery power, at which point it lay down and assumed a sleeping posture.

As well as the robot QRIO, the experimenters put two other toys among the children – a teddy bear and another, dumber, robot called Robby.

Surprisingly, though many children hugged the teddy bear before the experiment started, by the end of the study, the least huggable entity, QRIO, was hugged the most, followed by Robby; the most huggable toy, the teddy bear, was never hugged. When children touched QRIO, they did so very carefully. Robby, on the other hand, was treated like an inanimate object.

The children cared for QRIO more than Robby, many covering it with a blanket and saying "night-night" when it lay on the floor as its batteries ran out.

Children came to treat QRIO as part of their class and looked after it as they would a person or pet. Some cried when it fell down. They treated it more like one of them than a toy.

As reported in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, when the robot was programmed to act freely and unpredictably, the children's behaviour improved.

When the robot was dumbed down and re-programmed to behave in a more limited and predictable manner for 15 sessions the kids lost interest and their behaviour deteriorated. Over the last three sessions the robot was switched to full power and the kids' behaviour improved.

Over the five-month trial, rather than losing interest, the interaction between children and the robot intensified and, over that period, the robot became an important part not only of the toddlers' lives but also of the lives of teachers, parents and researchers. The robot was so lifelike that it triggered strong sentiments among the people around it.

The three researchers who did the work claim that the robot "achieved surprisingly close bonding and socialisation with human toddlers for sustained periods and that it could have great potential in helping teachers and enriching the classroom". Just how, they don't specify.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers back in Japan are working day and night to make their robots even more loveable and toddler-friendly.