Designing Parent-Child-Robot Triadic Storybook Reading Interaction

Abstract

With an increasing availability, social robots’ domains and applications have been expanding, yet the research on human-robot interaction (HRI) still mostly focuses on single person to single robot interactions. Contributing to the field of multi-party HRI in educational domain, this thesis presents a novel parent-child-robot interaction paradigm in the context of shared reading. Constructive parent-child shared reading is crucial in children’s early literacy learning, and as a result, we strive to aid children’s learning with productive and engaging parent-child-robot triadic reading interactions.

The thesis work designs and develops an interactive reading system consisting of a robot facilitator, a storybook tablet app, and a teleoperation controller. Using the implemented reading system, we conduct a pilot Wizard of Oz (WoZ) triadic interaction study with four families, observing and analyzing their triadic interactions in shared reading setting.

The pilot study investigates the effects of triadic reading on dyadic reading, and compares the effects of different robot interaction strategies. The study’s results suggest that the triadic reading experience generally have a positive influence on families’ reading behaviors and their perceptions on social robots, and that each robot strategy has a unique set of effects on the interaction. The thesis work’s results, along with its discussions, provide critical insights into parent-child-robot shared reading design considerations