Children’s Relationships with Robots:Robot is Child’s New Friend

As the development of autonomous robots has moved towards creating social robots, children’s interactions with robots will soon become a central focus in research. The purpose of this study was to examine how children think about and attribute features of friendship to a robot after a brief interaction with one. Children visiting a science centre located in a major Western Canadian city were randomly selected to participate in an experiment set up at the centre. A total of 184 children ages 5 to 16 years (M = 8.18 years) with an approximate even number of boys and girls participated. Children were interviewed after observing a traditional robot, a small 5 degree of freedom robot arm, perform a block stacking task. A total of nine open-ended questions were asked to measure children’s perceptions of affiliation with the robot. Content analysis revealed that a large majority would consider a friendship with the robot, and participate in friendship-type behaviors with it. Significant sex differences in how children ascribe characteristics of friendship to a robot were also found.