Assessing the Children’s Receptivity to the Robot MARKO
Abstract
This paper presents an experimental assessment of the children’s receptivity to
the human-like conversational robot MARKO. It reports on a production of a corpus that is
composed of recordings of interaction between children, with cerebral palsy and similar
movement disorders, and MARKO, in realistic therapeutic settings. Twenty-nine children
participated in this study: 17 of them were recruited from among patients with cerebral
palsy and similar movement disorders, and 12 healthy. Approximately 222 minutes of
session time was recorded. All dialogues were transcribed, and nonverbal acts were
annotated. A control group of 15 children (14 with cerebral palsy, one with spina bifida)
was also included. The evaluation of the corpus showed that the positive effects go beyond
social triggering – the children not only positively responded to MARKO, but also
experienced increased motivation and engagement in therapy.
Keywords:
child-robot interaction / robot-assisted therapy / robot MARKO / cerebral palsy / cognitive infocommunicationsSource:
Acta Polytechnica Hungarica, 2018, 15, 5, 47-66Publisher:
- Budapest : Óbuda University