Behavior Analysis of Children's Touch on a Small Humanoid Robot: Long-term Observation at a Daily Classroom over Three Months

We have been conducting HRI (human-robot interaction) studies with the basic principle of design by immersion, which suggests the importance of researchers moving themselves into unconstrained daily-life environments. This is crucial for design and development of social robots that interact and assist people in the daily real-world. In this paper we report findings on a study where a small humanoid robot kept attending at a nursery school on a daily basis for more than three months. We focus on children's touch behavior on the robot, and conduct video analyses based on six categories related to the touch behavior. Results tell us important conditions for designing every-day robots.