Sustaining interaction dynamics and engagement in dyadic child-robot interaction kinesics: Lessons learnt from an exploratory study

Motivated by questions of interaction design for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), an exploratory initial study was carried out with children and a robotic pet in order to improve understanding the design space for interaction with an autonomous robot. Interactions were very unstructured in a relaxing and familiar environment. The scope of the study was quite broad in order to cover a wide range of possibly relevant types of interactions. The study of the resulting interaction dynamics with rich and with poor contextual cues identies key factors for interaction design and suggests some guidelines for initiating, maintaining, and regulating ongoing interaction. In particular, non-directed and directional feedback, turn-taking rhythms, and the interactional kinesics of human-robot dyads are discussed dimensions for HRI design. This is hoped to enable future studies to specically address in more depth the issues raised in this paper.