Robots for Kids: Designing Social Machines That Support Children's Learning

In this guest post, Jacqueline M. Kory Westlund, a researcher in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab describes her projects and explorations to understand children's relationships with social robots. This story begins in 2013, in a preschool in Boston, where I hide, with laptop, headphones, and microphone, in a little kitchenette. Ethernet cables trail across the hall to the classroom, where 17 children eagerly await their turn to talk to a small fluffy robot. "Hi, my name is Mox! I'm very happy to meet you." The pitch of my voice is shifted up and sent over the somewhat laggy network. My words, played by the speakers of Mox the robot and picked up by its microphone, echo back with a 2-second delay into my headphones. It's tricky to speak at the right pace, ignoring my own voice bouncing back, but I get into the swing of it pretty quickly. It's one of our pilot tests before we embark on an upcoming experimental study.