It Takes Two: Using Co-creation to Facilitate Child-Robot Co-regulation

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 years old) showed that the co-creation activity successfully facilitated co-regulation by improving children’s agency. It also positively affected the acceptance of the robot. We furthermore identified five distinct profiles detailing the different needs and motivations children have for the level of involvement they chose during the co-creation process.