January 24-26, 2018, at Northern Illinois University
Overview
This two-day invitational workshop brought together researchers in the learning sciences, computer science, engineering, and psychology to review the current status of research on children-robot interaction, discuss theoretical and technical aspects that can support the research, and explore the potential for future research in the area from the social, emotional and cognitive, and educational perspectives.
During the workshop, the researchers shared their expertise and research to inform each other and address core research questions, including:
- What are the current statuses of research and development efforts in child/robot interaction?
- What are theoretical perspectives that may guide research on developing child/robot collaborative systems?
- What are important research issues in engineering assistance for child development with a robot?
- What technologies are available to design child/robot interaction and collect data to assess the efficacy?
- What are the challenges and opportunities in developing such technologies and research programs?
- In what way are the research issues aligned with the NSF goal of Broadening Participation in STEM education and STEM workforce (particularly, the NSF initiative INCLUDES, Human Technology Partnership)?
For more information:
- Read the Workshop Report: Robots, Young Children, & Alternative Input Methods [PDF]
- NIU’s Create Center – Workshop on Robots, Young Children, & Alternative Input Methods provides more details and videos of workshop presentations