Overview
Haru4Kids is a project sponsored by UNICEF and Honda Research Institute (Spain) in collaboration with Indiana University. The aim is to research Human-Robot Interaction inside the household, it is primarily centered around interactions with children as a cover for privacy perception insights.
In this scenario, Haru is a prototype robot that aims to stimulate children’s cognitive development, creativity, problem-solving and collaborative skills.
The research
We were set to leave Haru at home with 20 families with children willing to participate in the study for 2 weeks. In these two weeks we would requests the guardians of the children to nudge the children into playing with Haru for a few minutes each day. Before starting the study we would make a screening interview with the guardians and children and another one at the end of the study to try and figure out how children perceive a robot such as Haru in their house and keep the records for further study and improvement in Haru’s interactions with children.
The challenge
I was tasked with designing and translating the games for the children as well as recovering information about the interviews and trying to deglose the insights for further pondering and refactoring of certain modules offered in Haru’s SDK.
Indirect research for direct answers about privacy perception in children
The questions for the children were carefully designed with their particularities of a child in mind so the answers could be done without much tampering. The topics and contexts of these were about their daily life. The games were exclusively designed to work with verbal input. Traditional guessing games and tongue twisters were worked inside Haru.
Conclusion
Researching robot interfaces was a grounding experience in my understanding of perception. Being able to handle information in such a way that a child would suffice as a data output was a very fun way to test our creativity. This project taught me about all the intricacies that an artifact can develop when it takes a 3D real-life form and talks and reacts to what we say. Truly a wonderful experience.
