Physical extracurricular activities in educational child-robot interaction

In an exploratory study on educational child-robot interaction we investigate the effect of alternating a learning activity with an additional shared activity. Our aim is to enhance and enrich the relationship between child and robot by introducing “physical extracurricular activities”. This enriched relationship might ultimately influence the way the child and robot interact with the learning material. We use qualitative measurement techniques to evaluate the effect of the additional activity on the child-robot relationship. We also explore how these metrics can be integrated in a highly exploratory cumulative score for the relationship between child and robot. This cumulative score suggests a difference in the overall child-robot relationship between children who engage in a physical extracurricular activity with the robot, and children who only engage in the learning activity with the robot.